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Friday

Friday / Ireland / memories / photo / video — Comments Off
15
May 26

I spun around the ‘Hello Summer” sign on the front porch today

In the backyard we have a few irises that are showing off. I shot this from the hip as we were between hither and thither … or was it after the yon? Who can keep it straight? Who needs to keep it straight? It’s Friday!

My grading is complete. The semester is complete. Well, I must still submit my grades, which I’ll do this weekend. And I have a meeting Monday. And another one Wednesday. And at least three others to be determined. Some of those, at least will be a part of the mental shift from this term to the fall term, with a lot of summer in between.

I am looking forward to the summer in between. I am going to read a lot. I am going to finish some projects. I’m going to not think about work for a long while. That might be the hardest part. It will also be valuable. And that begins at the conclusion of the two meetings next week.

I wonder when it actually start to mentally feel like summer this year. I’ll let you know.

I’m still living in the happy memories of our wonderful Irish vacation. So, I’m sharing extra videos that we didn’t get to at the time. It was a great vacation. I have a lot of footage. This will go on for some time. Enjoy it with me, won’t you?

This is Malin Head — and it is absolutely worth seeing.

Friday / Ireland / memories / photo / sports — Comments Off
8
May 26

A few steps closer to summer

Canvas, the platform the university uses for its online coursework, has returned to form. Came back late last night. This was only a problem because we’re in the middle of finals. Canvas died right in the middle of one of my final windows, in fact. The real problem was that the platform was hacked. There are secondary concerns. Did Instructure pay off the hackers? What got inserted into the code? Why did it just come back? Why didn’t the university’s IT people caution caution with returning to the thing? Why do we submit ourselves to annual training, and daily dual authentication processes, if as soon as this primary platform comes back the email just says, “It’s back!”

It said a little more, that email, but not much.

Anyway, I received the last few exams — they’re exams, but I’ve been calling them papers, my apologies — from the class that had their final window interrupted. I gave my online class an extra day to get their final projects and their exams in. Canvas was down for about eight hours, they got a 24-hour extension. Seemed fair.

It’ll all be fine, the finals I mean. Those are important IT questions that, hopefully, someone is answering.

It’s been a full day of it, but I’m hoping that, before tonight is done, I’ll have finished assessing 48 of those finals. Just 96 to go. (Guess what I’ll be doing this weekend!)

The cats are, helpfully, not helping with the grading. Sometimes they very much want to be involved. But, lately, Phoebe has been working on a new skill.

Poseidon climbs down to hit, or he muscles and claws his way up it. I’m not sure if he’s jumped to it. Phoebe has learned to climb onto now too. And where Poe looks so proud, Phoebe shifts into “So what? Now what?” pretty quickly.

Poe, for his part, has been taking seriously his new role as weatherproofing.

That’s the door to the garage, which we use a fair amount. When he doesn’t want you to go, you get a whole routine out of this now. It’s adorable. You just have to build in an additional 30 seconds of prep time to deal with him.

I wrote a little something, highlighting 10 Sports stories worth watching:

If your team isn’t in the thick of a postseason run you might be up for a little change of pace. Or, if the playoffs are too much, this could be just what you need to break the tension. Watch these 10 sports documentaries celebrating their 10th anniversary this year. See them for the first time. See them again for the first time. In chronological order, they are …

Keepers of the Game is about the members of an all-Native American girls lacrosse team fighting for acceptance on every level: within the tribe, at their school, and in the larger community. They want to play a game that was historically a boys’ and men’s game, they do this with no financial support from their school system, and against a heated rival who looms large on the schedule. It starts slow, but it becomes downright cinematic. Keepers of the Game was an official selection at the Tribeca Film Festival. It was nominated for an Emmy, won an award at Cannes and, in just 88 minutes allows us to see sometimes hesitant kids become confident athletes. Isn’t that what we want out of youth sports?

The Cleveland sports curse persisted for 52 years, a dry spell running from 1964 to 2016. (So if your teams aren’t in playoff contention right now, it could be worse.) Believeland aired in May of 2016. ESPN was hoping to cash in before King James inevitably rendered all the footage obsolete. The Cavs won the 2016 NBA Finals just 32 days later after it aired. A few weeks later, ESPN aired a version with a new ending, the exciting 3-1 come-from-behind series win. Between Believeland and the Cavs triumph, though, local man Stipe Miocic won the UFC Heavyweight Championship and the American Hockey League’s Lake Erie Monsters won the Calder Cup. We leave it to you to decide which was the greater inspiration for the Cavaliers.

There are eight more documentaries in that piece, all of them are good, several of them are truly great.

That’s Fanad Head. It’s a real treat.

adventures / Friday / photo / Rowan / scholarship / things to read — Comments Off
1
May 26

Rounding spring’s corner

We went back to campus today. The student athletes were doing a fund raiser. They were taking shifts, sitting in chairs, wearing plastic ponchos. Pretty soon they were wearing whipped cream pies.

That’s an All-American. She’s been in both of our classes. She’s a lovely human being and, somehow, that meant she got more pies to the face than any of her peers did during her half-hour shift. I don’t know how much money you raise doing a bit like that, but it was a lovely spring day and they’d set this up in a quiet little corner of campus and people came by in dribs and drabs for an hour or so. The overhead seemed to be a few ponchos, a couple of cans of whipped cream and some paper plates.

Nearby, there’s this piece of public art.

It’s titled Knowledge is Power.

Knowledge is Power is inspired by a quote by Francis Bacon. In creating a visual representation of the verbal statement, Artist Zenos Frudakis thought a book would make an appropriate metaphor, as it has been the traditional form of preserving and transmitting knowledge through the ages.

Always interested in philosophy and the love of wisdom, Mr. Frudakis wanted this sculpture to embody those who are good examples of having powerful ideas. As a compositional element, he has faces and quotes organized around two central figures he considers two giants of thought. On the left page is Charles Darwin, and those around him are of an earlier period. On the right page is Albert Einstein, surrounded by more contemporary figures.

There’s a lot of art around campus, it turns out. I need to see more of it. Maybe something will rub off.

We had lunch at Chick-fil-A. For the first time in a good while, it seemed, we had lunch together and didn’t have to rush off somewhere. It was pleasant, it felt a bit like unwinding.

Something I wrote:

I’ve been developing and teaching a class we call Criticism in Sports Media for the last two semesters. Students are learning to consume and interpret media critically, place it within broader contexts, and examine the structure and meaning of the material. This, I say, gives one an appreciation of sport media’s role in contemporary life, because sports reflect the values of a culture.

It’s a good course, and helpful. Students know there’s a lot going on, and they’re trying to understand the media landscape that surrounds and inundates us all. They are coming to understand that there are some things they don’t understand, and they’d like to try to make some sense of it.

The class spends a lot of time on the printed word and on documentaries, and we discuss social media and, lately, AI content.

Now, at the end of the term, I wanted to leave them with a lasting impression about recognizing and addressing AI.

I’ve got a few more things I want to write soon. But, first, back to the grading. Just 144 papers and exams to go!

That video is from Mullaghmore Head, where we both fell down, separately and hilariously. You’ll just have to read about it.

adventures / cycling / Friday / photo / site — Comments Off
24
Apr 26

Getting us to the weekend

Just computer work all day today. I had a committee meeting this morning. Trying to stay up on the grading for much of the rest of the day. We had a spirited little bike ride this evening, caught the wind on the way out, which made me feel strong for the first two-thirds of the route. I had a 30 mph sprint for no reason at all.

The cattle weren’t impressed.

To be fair to the snobby bovines, I was moving pretty slow just then.

Otherwise, I spent a few minutes updating the rotating headers and footers for the blog. There are now 124 banners for the top of the page and 125 for the bottom of the page. If you click refresh you’ll see them all, eventually, in a randomized order. Here are today’s additions.

Lights at the Guinness Museum, Dublin, Ireland.

Signage at the Guinness Museum, Dublin, Ireland.

Sliabh Liag Cliffs, Ireland.

Malin Head, the northernmost point in Ireland.

A toy store at the Amsterdam Airport Schiphol.

A sporting goods store in Ballina, Ireland.

A pedestrian trail sign at Tulan Strand, Ireland.

Bozorth Hall on the Rowan University campus.

baseball / Delaware / Friday / photo / video — Comments Off
17
Apr 26

The greatest minor league baseball game ever

It started out as a joke, I guess. My godsisters-in-law (just go with it) have five highly active children between them and everyone works and travels and lives full lives and so they are calendar fiends. We get calendar invites for things to which we are invited. And we started getting calendar invites to things which are obvious jokes. Some family things aren’t meant for me, but they’re legendary, and so you’re always welcome, thanks but no thanks. You know the sort. Also, I don’t partake in handbag bingo.

But I do enjoy a good game of bingo. Maybe I should go to that.

Anyway, sometime just before last Christmas I got a calendar invite to one of the kid’s concert performance at the minor league ball park. He was taking part in an orchestra and of course we were going to that. THat was tonight.

So we got to the venue and got seat just behind home plate and our guy and his viola and a bunch of his classmates and students from other schools, apparently, all flood the field and they play their song. It was great. It was cute. Parents were proud.
Everyone had a nice time.

I met the mascot, who took a selfie with my phone.

After the performance was the game, of course. It’s high A, and the starting pitcher has been at this level since 2021. In the first inning he hit the leadoff pitcher, got the second guy to ground into a double play, walked the third batter on four straight. The next batter drove that guy in, but was thrown out at third. It was a chaotic top of the first inning.

I looked at both rosters, the oldest guy on either team was born in May of 1999. Only four of the guys in either dugout are 20th century kids.

At one point, a right fielder lost a ball in the sun. The ball was on the ground at the time.

High A ball is great fun!

Eventually the godnephews and godniece (just go with it) came and sat with us. The visiting pitcher was throwing a no-hitter through five. His team was out ahead. A reliever came in and the wheels flew off.

This is how you know the wheels flew off. The alternate mascot makes his way onto the field. Mr. Celery happened by accident. He has no mythological backstory. They’re a bit sketchy on the actual backstory. The prevailing version goes that there was some health food initiative in years past, and whoever was putting that on left a few mascots behind. The team found it in storage, and then decided, for no reason at all, to put an intern in that outfit. And every time the home team scores Mr. Celery comes out and runs around a bit.

And, tonight, he ran around a lot.

That reliever recorded one inning pitched, and the loss. He allowed five runs on three hits, two walks, and two strikeouts. He now has a 30.86 ERA.

Sitting behind us was a fraternity from one of the local universities. They were there supporting one of the kids who was involved in the pregame festivities. They were loud and funny and pleasant. They started the wave. They invented a new cheer.

Our godnephews were completely taken with them and the frat boys welcomed them into their night. Those guys were great. They were very kind and generous to the kids, and they didn’t necessarily have to be. They indulged their enthusiasms, so there was the 2nd grader, coaching the fraternity into doing the wave, and, thus, the entire stadium. He and his brother started picking spots for the new cheer, “Get your rocks up!” which involved throwing your two fists into the air and making a lot of noise. They were giving the boys high fives and posed for photos and you would have thought they hung the actual moon.

At one point, I looked at my godbrother-in-law-in-law (just go with it) and said of his son, “I believe he’s found his tribe.”

Indeed, I think the 2nd grader now knows the secret handshake.

Somehow he got a foul ball. He got one of the field crew to sign his ball for him. All the kids got to high five the mascots. They did just about everything but launch the fireworks.

I’m making shirts for the next game.

We’ll be back.