family « Kenny Smith | Omnes hic sumus discere.

family

There’s a lot about time

Some habits that we have are good. Some habits that we have are bad. Some habits become routines and rituals because we do them long enough, because of expediency. Some habits need to be dismissed, because they do us no good. Checking email early in the morning is, for me, in that latter group.

I say that because, this morning, I woke up, checked my email too early, and then bothered to read one of the unsolicited junk emails.

Look, Michael, whoever you are … mine is not the inbox you want for this. If you knew what I teach, and how I do it, or if you understood my approach to all of this … which, after technological constructivism, brings me to an internet trope. If my phone was listening to me, it wouldn’t allow things like sales pitches like this, or gambling apps, or prediction market scams, to come my way. It’s wasted effort, wasted air, wasted ads. Wasted time.

I’m never so aware of time as when I feel it is being wasted.

It’s not impatience, you understand. Sometimes the small lulls are necessary, or meditative, or peaceful. Some of them are too short to be of real consequence. Waiting on an elevator, for instance, is not a chore, unless you’re separated from an important meeting with a restroom by the doors that won’t open. Maybe that’s why people don’t advertise on them a lot. Maybe marketers don’t want us to associate their product with “Hurry and open up.”

This is the elevator in the building where my Tuesday-Thursday class is. It isn’t an advertisement, per se, but is a university affirmation, a new marketing slogan. Perhaps it is our call to action.

In class today we discussed a reading about Mark Zuckerberg’s testimony before Congress in 2018. The reading uses a fun little kitchen metaphor — you cutting carrots, and the fingerprints you leave on the knife.

Imagine, if you will a kitchen knife. If you were asked about the purpose of the knife, you may think “to chop some carrots” or, more indirectly, your intentions may be to eat healthfully, save money, or take time to sit down with your family. In any case, your intentions are likely to cut up food for a meal.

Now let us suppose a crime has been committed. The police, in searching your home, take fingerprints from your knife, analyze them, and even add their findings to a national fingerprint registry. If you were asked whether those were your fingerprints the answer would most likely be yes. While the fingerprints may not have been something you intended to create with the knife, you still made them. In other words, you unintentionally created some content. You have also indirectly helped to expand the fingerprint registry, perhaps assisting with the development of new information and improving analytic techniques.

The metaphor goes on: Facebook, Meta, is the knife maker, but also the knife owner, and, of course, the police. I brought that together with a few real-world stories that drove home the point.

We also talked about what’s transpired with Meta since that testimony. (Spoiler: a lot, and all of it damning.) I’m beginning to worry this class thinks my goal is to turn them off of digital media altogether. That’s not the goal, of course. Among other things, though, they need to think closely and carefully and critically about these things.

After class I walked back over to my building. Happily, it was still standing. The fire trucks were gone, and people were moving about as normal. On the way, though, I walked by the statue, Contact. I wrote about it here. Then, two week, we looked a bit more closely at the couple’s hands. Last week, I offered a closer look at some of the textures. Today, we’ll have a quick glimpse at the hugging couple’s faces.

You can’t get a good look at the man, given his positioning, but it’s all overwhelmed by this out-of-every-time hairstyle. It looks like he is peering into some far away place though, doesn’t it?

If you noticed his tangled, thorny bristle of eyelashes, I did too. As you can see from here, they are painted on, and it feels like the most hasty thing on the installation.

And the woman, well, I caught this on a great day. It had just rained; the single single tear adds something to the maudlin tone of the installation. Maybe so, anyway.

As I look at her face again, she looks like a thousand people you know. How you can do all that and rush through the eyelashes, I do not know.

Next week, we’ll take one last look at this statue. There are some other details we’ll want to see.

I was putting away some papers last night in the office, looking for the right folder for it, when I stumbled upon a little bag of family keepsakes. This was an out of sight, out of mind sort of thing, but as soon as my fingers touched what gave the bag its heft I knew what the bag contained, what each item inside of it was, and at least a part of the story of each of those pieces.

One of those items was my great-grandfather’s watch. My mother’s grandfather. She gave it to me a few years ago. I’d put it away, waiting to find a place that might be able to get it working. I had, in fact, looked for and found shop like that not too long ago. It’s only about 20 minutes away, but it’ll take a deliberate trip to get there. So as I pulled the watch out of the bag, and the little felt bag within it, I figured I would set the watch somewhere prominent, so it was in sight and on my mind, so I could actually get it looked at.

Then I did something unusual. I wound it. And it worked.

This isn’t a particularly old watch, and he was a humble farmer, so there’s nothing that’s fancy about it. But my great-grandfather, Henry, died in 1982 and this has sat in a box since then.

It runs a bit slow, but that can be remedied, and so now I really do want to get it looked at, tuned up and find a way to wear it properly. It’s a working family heirloom. Today, I’ve pulled it out of my pocket more times than I needed to know the time.

adventures / family / Monday / photo — Comments Off
28
Sep 26

Back where the heavy land and the green sands meet

A period of time can move quickly. A period of time can move slowly. This weekend was more of the former. I had about 84 hours on the ground on this trip, a strict limit I impose so that no one gets too weary of my antics. Here’s one last photograph from my Alabama sojourn.

I touched on this on Friday, but the water has defined and developed and dictated terms in that little corner of the world. And, right there below that sunset and at the bottom of that hill is a bit of that water, a tributary of the river that does all of those things. That particular part itself being full of mystery, awe and normalcy.

I’ve never lived on the water, so my levels of appreciation about it are all over the place. But if I sit here and write about this for too long it could become a classic Southern Gothic tale. (Right through here passed the Trail of Tears, after all. In fact, I’ve spent much of my life going back and forth across one segment of that route, for goodness sake.) So we won’t dwell, for now.

This morning, after a bit of work I watched my flight get delayed … hours in advance … we sat around a while. And then we moseyed our way to drive toward the airport. Mentally saying “until next time” to these familiar, old, family haunts, while counting the unimpressive amount of yard signs for the upcoming midterm elections. (There are not a lot. None for the Republican running for governor. One for his opponent. And, in deep red Alabama, in three-plus days of traveling the highways and byways of two counties, I saw exactly one sign that bragged of a presidential endorsement. Even in Alabama there is no juice left in those coattails, mixaphorically speaking.)

We stopped outside of Nashville and had one of those time warp lunches. When we sat down we figured we could walk around a few shops to kill a few more minutes. Before I knew it I was calculating the remaining travel time and demanding the check. Then we got diverted and — I don’t know if you know this — Nashville will demonstrate to you 24.7 why the people in east and west Tennessee hate middle Tennessee. There just aren’t enough “bless your heart” sayings go around. And, sure, word has gotten out about “bless your heart,” but we have other, deeper, more profound, more biting ways to insult people in the South. Not all of them have made it to the national discourse yet. Most of them were inspired by Nashville.

Anyway, made it to the airport just in time. Breezed through security like a rock star. Got down to the gate … and waited. Also, we waited. Got on the plane and we waited.

I don’t know how it is that the third-largest airline in the world is so bad at the basic demands of the job, but it really makes you want to avoid the fourth and fifth carrier.

Give them this: I asked for a tomato juice (because I read one of those pieces that says this is the drink that signals to the flight crew that you know the score, something about altitude, cabin pressure, and salt content) and they were suddenly, “Yes sir. Absolutely, sir. Another can of our hand-crushed tomato juice, sir?”

They did not. Also, it tasted like tomato juice, just like the last time I had it on a plane. Or the last time I had it sitting on terra firma. It’s enough to make me wonder whether I can believe everything I see on the web.

The flight was fine. Got in about two hours later than I should have. Read my way through all of it. Left the plane, managed to escape the airport, mostly by ignoring signs, following the crowd, and a vague sense of muscle memory. Happily reunited with my lovely bride, who made the sacrifice of waiting on me for dinner. We ate dinner. Now I’m working on class stuff for tomorrow.

There’s a lot to get through this week. Let’s get through it!

Alabama / family / history / photo / weekend — Comments Off
27
Sep 26

The rare weekend post

After church and lunch, we stopped by my grandparents’ home. My mother and grandfather had recently found a box that she wanted me to see. Apparently no one knew it existed. And, inside, you could see some old newspaper clippings, a few letters, some note cards that my grandfather used to write out notes for his sermons, and so on. There was some of their school memorabilia in there, too. My grandmother’s high school tassel in there. Also, there was a little memory book from her graduating class, and her diploma. My grandfather’s high school diploma was in the box, too. It’s all a trip back in time.

Here’s the cover to his diploma, class of 1951.

He also had some sort of memory book that was stored away in the box. He must have been a popular kid. Lots of signatures, names that mean nothing to me, but a lot to others. A few pictures. There were some notes of things that must have made sense 75 years ago. There was a picture of him, a studio headshot, maybe it was his graduation photo. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it before.

I was also interested in the line art.

I think it is important to note that my grandfather went to a Bible school.

Also, attitudes about these sorts of things might have been different three-quarters of a century ago.

I really want to know where the school purchased these books. I’m sure they caused quite a stir.

This is my favorite one. I’m saving it for some as yet unknown special occasion. I’ll change the text and use it somewhere and I’ll remember that my grandfather, as a boy, looked at this image.

I never knew him. He died soon after I was born. We met once. And I “heard” one of his last sermons. He’d come to visit and the local church had asked him to preach. Of course I was an infant, so I have only the retelling. I’m told I have some of his mannerisms when speaking, though. How could that be?

There was also a little bag of coins in this newly discovered box. I’m going to share a few more of them this week, but, for now, here’s some mid-century Canadian pennies.

So my mother is bordering on becoming a numismatist. She’s downloaded an app and is scanning these things in and telling me about the coins. It is fun and infectious and charming. And then she says to me, she says, “When you find out more about them, let me know.”

So I have to do what I do now.

That’s somewhere between six cents and $10,000 in my hand right there. I’m pretty confident it’s closer to six cents.

While I didn’t take a photo of the reverse side (for some reason) the one interesting thing of note is that the 1957 coin has Queen Elizabeth’s likeness. The others have King George’s. (His coin image looks nothing like the movies.) I’m assuming that 1952 penny was one of the last one’s struck. The KG does not stand for King George, but rather G.E. Kruger-Gray, who designed the leaves. He was a British artist. He did coats of arms, coins for places all over the British Empire and stained glass windows. He died in 1943. With just a few exceptions Canada used his design for another 70 years after his death.

We’ll wonder forever how these six coins came to sit in a box in Alabama for decades. We’ll wonder forever when they landed there. It’s better when there’s a little wonder. It makes you look for more.

Look in all the boxes.

Because you have no idea what you’ll find. And, as you’ll see sometime in the next few days, you can make some wonderful discoveries inspired by that sort of wonder.

adventures / books / family / Friday / photo / Rowan / sport — Comments Off
11
Sep 26

This fine day

What a fine day this was! It was a fine day! And it followed on the heels of another fine day. Fine days all around, for everyone. You might have to seek out the parts that make a day so, but if you hunt long enough you’ll realize that you’re only making the parameters for your day, anyway, so may as well just get to it. Let the day come to you, which I do to much, and hope it’s fine, or fine the things that redeeming, wonderful, and rewarding in every day.

I’m going to try that one day. But not this day. This was a fine day all of its own accord.

But first, yesterday … I had to walk from the building where my office and some classes are to another building where I have a class. This was previously the sauna, but now it’s just the uncomfortably warm older person’s residence. The weather on the fourth floor of that building reflects what is going on outdoors, I was told. When it is hot, it is hot. Oh, the first three floors were nice and cool last week, but I am left to conclude they just ran out of duct work and insulation for the fourth and fifth floor. But, yesterday, because the temperatures have dipped every-so-slight, I only sweat through two layers of clothes.

In that class we discussed the diffusion of innovation theory. Started with agriculture! Bet you didn’t know that! See? A fine day for discovery. Some of the 19th century work that would go into Everett Rogers’ 1962 classic had to do with things like the spreading and adoption of information. Rogers then pulled on 508 studies across anthropology, sociologiy, education, medicine and agriculture and tried to explain how this theory can help us understand how and why new ideas and tech spread, and the conditions that help with that. Diffusion of innovation is such a beloved thing that a few years ago there was a 50th anniversary celebration for it. For a theory. I knew someone who traveled for that event.

We also talked about binary code and how that makes all of these digital things possible and how innovations can move beyond what designers or early adopters intend. I left them with something to think about. A question about a person becoming ones and zeroes themselves. I think I’m going to let them chew on that for another day or two before we get into it. It’ll make for an interesting mindbender when we get to Walter Benjamin.

On my way back to the office I got the third angle of the statue. From this perspective it looks like something sad has happened. Her face is just so. He’s gripping that hat a little too tight.

It still surprised me, to see that statue. I still think, when I catch it out of the corner of my eye, that it is two actual people in a particular moment.

One more wide perspective, next week, then we’ll start looking more closely at some of the figures’ details.

Last evening we got home and decided to sit outside and read. We know how to party! Also, our Sunday afternoon hot reading date is close to becoming a Thursday evening hot reading date, as well. When the sky is showing off, why not?

At some point, and I hope it is no time soon for selfish reasons, it’ll be cool enough to use the fire pit. Then we’ll be reading pages that smell of smoke and pulp. For other reasons, I am looking forward to using the fire pit, because we need to burn some twigs and branches.

I am reading Adin Dobkin’s Sprinting Through No Man’s Land, about the first Tour de France after the conclusion of World War I. Race designer, and editor of L’Auto, Henri Desgrange put on the most grueling tour possible. Dobkin makes the point a few times here that Desgrange’s ideal of a Tour winner was still coming into focus, even after a dozen races and four years without La Grande Boucle during the Great War. Some of these guys were still in the service. Some had just gotten out and had no time to train. They were going over some of the harshest terrain possible, less than a year after the war had ended, and even into new parts of France. This, for Desgrange, was an exploration, and a statement. While the point had, thus far, always been to sell more subscriptions and issues of L’Auto, it was also important to show France to Europe, and France to the French.

The thing about open road bike racing, even now, is that there is always a lot about the event we, the spectators, don’t know, even with cameras on motorocycles and drone shots and microwave technology. The empty spots in a given race are even more pronounced a century on. And, from here, maybe they don’t matter. But this does.

If there was enough credible source material, I’d read books on important and insightful anecdotes like this all day long.

Desgrange was a colorful and controversial character for many people, but at the same time the man knew what he was doing.

This evening we went to see my god-niece-in-law (just go with it) play her third varsity game at the college level. We saw her debut — she started! — recently and this game was also close enough to get to. Her mom was there. So were her grandparents. And also her godparents-in-law. That’s my in-laws, if you’re trying to keep this straight.

Before the game we met up for pizza with my in-laws and my uncle-in-law. (This gimmick gets confusing, but that’s what makes it fun.) We made it over to the game just as it was getting underway.

You know that old saying about missing the shots you don’t take? Our star player does not have that problem. Put the ball at her feet and she’s going to the cage. In this game her team got their first goal of the season. Then they put up a second goal. Guess who got the assist? And then, her teammates slipped her the ball twice more, and she got her first collegiate goal to tie the game 3-3.

The referee, let us say, enjoyed putting his stamp on the game, such that the other team were able to score with 29 seconds remaining in the game. When he wasn’t doing that, however, he was watching the emerging star do her thing.

We took a family photo after the game. They’d just lost a heartbreaker, they’re still looking for their first win. She was so happy. It’s still early yet, but it looks like maybe she’s found the right place for her — and isn’t that what all of this is about?

We went out for ice cream after. I told you, it was a fine day, just a fine day.

family / photo / site / sport / Tuesday — Comments Off
1
Sep 26

First day of classes

Oh it was hot today. The shade was a good four or five degrees cooler, and I was grateful for the shade. There’s a reason people move more slowly where I’m from, and this is that reason. In the old days, before forced air, a person would perish in the real heat. And sometimes they’d do that before they burst into flames. It’s true. You don’t read about it in books all that often, because the books would ignite too. Also, they ban some books there now, which is, we can all agree, just about the most offensive and dumbest performative thing you can do to a collection of ideas. Though the act of doing so does seem to create a lot of curiosity about the ideas contained therein. An inquisitive and rebellious human nature has that going for it.

There’s no reason at all I’m on that subject. It’s really hot here today. It was hot tonight. And humid. It was humid like home. And there were insects everywhere. But we’ll get to that.

Well, class. I have one class on Tuesday. This is Digital Media Processes, and its about the structure and concepts behind our social and digital media. And if that sounds fun, it is! But more is watching me stumble my way through trying to find an easy way to discuss what it means to discuss the conceptual nature of things without getting ahead of myself, which is precisely what I did today. Hey, it was my first day, too.

This was my 19th first day. One day, I’m going to be good at it. Maybe on the 20th first day.

This class was supposed to be in the same building where my office is, but it got moved for logistical reasons and so now I must walk some 450 feet feet and around a corner, to another building. There on the corner is a fiberglass statue. It is a statue of a man and woman in a deep hug and perhaps a passionate kiss, depending on where you are standing. And I’m wondering how many times I’ll walk by it before I think something like, “Awwww, that’s nice,” or “Get a room you guys!” Twice as I walked by it today, I had that sort of reaction to the statue. Let us chart, this semester, how long it takes for something to sink into both sides of my brain.

The class is on the fourth floor of this building, which is where they put all the great classes. All of the professors wind up in the hot box eventually, according to the campus tradition I just made up. They don’t, apparently, put air conditioning in that class. I was sitting at the desk in the front of the room sweating, and it wasn’t nerves. My jacket may have been too heavy for this early in the term. Every jacket is.

Anyway, we did Syllabus and Expectation Day. I talked about what the class was. You’re threading a needle there, I think. I need them to come back. I need them to think this is interesting or useful for them. I don’t want to overwhelm them on the first day. I also need to tell the story of the class and introduce myself and get them talking just a little bit, because they’re going to be doing that a lot this term. And I need to show them the course and a slide deck and I have 75 minutes to do all this.

Here’s my bet, I’ll get back in the groove of laying out and delivering a 75 minute class before I figure out that statue is a statue. Time my brain understands — despite how often I am late in arriving at places. I can still talk 60 seconds without a clock and wrap it up on the post, because of my time in broadcasting, and I haven’t been on the air since the Bush administration. Seventy-five minutes I’ll get adjusted to. My other class, which runs two hours and 45 minutes, I’ll get adjusted to. Can I manage both in one semester? Is that a statue, or are those real people, moving slowly? Very. Very. Slowly.

We traveled from our campus to another campus to see my god-niece-in-law (just go with it) play in her first university field hockey game. I’ve known this little girl her whole life and now we’re watching this young woman, on day two of being a college student, start for her field hockey team as a true freshman.

She’s playing as a forward. She’s been working hard and I’m sure she’ll continue to work hard. The game didn’t go their way this evening. There were two lightning delays. And then the bugs descended. Have you ever been to an event at night where that really fine mist plays on you? The sort where you can’t really see it, but you can feel it and it is so obviously there? And then you look up into the lights and you can see all of that rain dancing and reflecting the light? This was like that, only with insects. More insects than you need to see at one place. The team we were there to see were the visitors and the home team needs to invest in some bats. If they did, those bats would live well.

At one point, the insects were just falling on us. Not flying into us. Falling on us. We joked that despite the two lightning delays, and the continued lightning that the officials ignored in the second half, that they would only call the game if two more almost-plague-like events occurred.

The home team, who no one likes very much won the game. The Knights, who we were cheering on, will fight on again another day. Lane played 52 minutes in probably the most humid conditions any of those young women have ever experienced. It felt like home, honestly. We — her parents were there, as where her grandparents and her aunt and some of her cousins — were sweating just sitting, dodging insects, and cheering on the Knights. Field hockey players do a lot of running.

I have seen enough to see how she is progressing at the craft. When she’s had a few more games in hand I’ll be interested to hear her opinion on how this game is different than the high school version. I noticed a bit of that here, in this one example, and this sport is inscrutable to me. (I stood behind the goal of one of her last high school games and, to me, a soccer goalie, I could see the game a lot better and understand it a bit more, but there’s always a lot to learn.)

Started her first game! She is that rare young person that can peer into the long term. I suspect she’s going to soon come to realize that if she keeps working hard, even better things are going to come her way. Sometimes the ball lands at your feet. She’ll be ready to put it in the cage.

Finally, since it is the first day of the month, I did all of the regular first-day-of-the-month things. I cleaned my desktop. I cleaned the downloads. I emptied the computer’s trash bin. I updated my boilerplates. I updated the spreadsheet where I keep site stats. (Doesn’t everyone do that?) Last month had the most visits in the 22-year history of the site. More than a quarter of a million! I don’t know why you’re all here, I’m grateful for every one of you that isn’t a bot. I’m glad you came back. I hope you’ll do it again.

Also, I updated the art on the front page of the site. This is another 10-photo collage from South Africa, at the Cape of Good Hope. Here’s the theme, but then go look. This will be here when you come back.

Those images will stay up for a month. I’ll update them again for October. Let’s all have a great time until then, shall we?

More tomorrow, including the second first day of classes.