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Monday

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20
Oct 25

There be whales here!

Today was pretty lousy. Just a bad feeling day all the way around. Body weary, incision … incised and sore. I enjoyed that delightful disoriented feeling of painkillers, without the benefit of painkillers. Just the worst day since the day after my little surgery. And odd that it comes 10 days after the thing.

So it was a delightful evening to go speak to a bunch of students, trying to keep my thoughts in order and my acronyms in line. Just a marvelous impression I left them with.

And then we went out and sat in the cold. I intended to take off my sports coat and put on a jacket I had in the backseat of the car, but it was taken out of the car. I did enjoy these portable little seats we got recently. They have chair backs, and they were material, rather than a cold plank of aluminum.

It was a first round game of the field hockey playoffs. My god-niece-in-law (just go with it) is a senior on the team. And she got a penalty shot in the game.

Her team won 7-0.

On Saturday, a day when the weather was much warmer and I felt much better. We went to the beach, and to a boat. But not this boat.

Same goal, though. We were out looking for whales, which are passing through on their seasonal migration. And what do you know, there’s a humpback now.

We saw two of them, from a safe and non-threatening distance. (There are laws about this. And the company that does the tour is very keen on following the laws, and telling you about them. And, also, keep your feet on the deck at all times. And please, for the love of the salty seas, stop trying to lean over the rails to pet the whales. They are 50 yards and more away.)

Thar she blows!

Or he. I’m not one to assign gender to our ocean-going neighbors. That may have been fine for Mellville, but we live in different times. Also, as far as I know, I’m no Melville.

(I’m no Melville.)

So we saw the one whale, and watched it dance and swim around for a while, and then quietly we moved off. And we found this whale.

It turns out that humpback whales have distinguishing patterns on the underside of their tails. Our vessel had several naturalists and some interns aboard, and while we were oohing and aaahing as tourists, they were doing the important work of studying the beasties. And they knew this one, and realized it, just from these quick glances at the tail marking.

We saw a handful of bottlenose dolphins on the way back in. But you’ll have to take my word for it. No pictures of them, but here’s the rock line that marks the return back into the little port.

And here’s a row of fishing vessels that were safely tied up. Maybe it’s a seasonal thing, or a Saturday thing.

It was a lovely little visit. Two whales, lots of birds, some dolphins and a nice day on the water. A three-hour tour. Not a single Gilligan reference was made.

We drove by this place on our way out, but did not stop.

It seems pretty bold to say you have the world’s best coffee. And at this particular store? They have 24 locations. To say nothing of every other shop that sells coffee. What are the odds?

At home, we had a flyover by a few Canada geese.

They’ll go back and forth from fields to ponds for weeks, always that direction in the evening, and the opposite direction in the midmorning, honking all the while.

I enjoy their song. For us, it is temporary.

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
13
Oct 25

Recovery began right away

I’m feeling fine, thanks. I had a little procedure Friday. Because there was a cutting implement and blood and gauze and stitches, I’m calling it a surgery. Look, I walked out of the room and to the car and had lunch after, so clearly no big deal. It was a dermatology thing, removing a small spot on my back. So I had back surgery. That’s how I’ll tell the tale. It was a preemptive sort of thing. They put some gauze and tape on me, I pulled my t-shirt on, and they re-taped it because that move loosened the tape.

This has been the extent of it. I woke up Saturday and felt pretty terrible. It’d been probably 12 or so hours since I’d taken any Tylenol and I tend to sleep on that side. So once a new OTC dose kicked in and I started moving around, it was fine.

In the medium term, I can’t do anything that involves a lot of exertion for two to four weeks. In the short term that has meant discovering which movements don’t hurt. Nothing too big and sweeping. Also, no sudden movements. And don’t pick up anything heavier than a gallon of milk. So, eight pounds. And I can’t lift and bend anything. So I’ll put my empty backpack on a chair or table, and then put my computer in it and that’ll be about it. And also the cats.

Not in my bag, just in general. I’ll pick up the cats.

In the long term the location of this incision is the primary problem. It is very near the shoulder blade. Now, for the purposes of wound healing, just imagine how much you use your arms and shoulders in a day.

But it feels OK. At its worst it feels like a sharply pulled muscle. In a way, it is very similar to that. And while it is in a tricky spot, the incision is helpful in letting me know if I am about to do too much. So I’m not doing too much.

You can, I’ve learned, sit awkwardly on it. That’s no fun.

Anyway, stitches out in 12 days. And then whatever new restrictions or limitations I’m given.

Of course, I was on my bike the next day. I am a cyclist. We came home from the skin pro’s office and I stood over my bike, just to see what it’d feel like. They said no heavy exertion. You’re not supposed to move around a lot on your bike anyway. I figured I would soft pedal, keep my hands on the hoods or at the stem, because if I went down to the drops that’d change my body position and might involve a flexing of the shoulders and back. So Saturday I clipped in and went around the loop our house is on, fully committed to go back inside if it felt bad. It felt fine.

I rode around on some neighborhood roads, just to be outside and say I pedaled a little bit that day. I got in about 10 miles. It was 40 minutes or so and I didn’t even work up a sweat. (You’re just going to have to let me do something over the course of two to four weeks, and this I can do.) Also, for that first day, I chose quite neighborhood roads that looked like this.

I went over and checked on the horses.

Also, I saw their neigh-boring friend.

And I noted that one of our other neighbors, who has a nice little herd of cattle, has stocked up the hay barn.

That was it. A super easy spin the day after back surgery. (We’re calling it that.) If I become a legendary athlete, we’ll point to this as one of those defining moments in my story.

More likely, we’ll just be looking at the flowers — but you never know.

This bush does not stop, and I respect its output a great deal.

And the bush daisy still looks wonderfully inspired.

We have this small planter hanging on the fence that cordons off the little vegetable garden. This year, despite however many seeds we put into the thing, it gave us nothing until just now, this beautiful little specimen. I’m glad I stopped by for a closer look.

And now, back to work. We’re talking about two new stories in my criticism class tomorrow, and audiences in org comm. I have decided to turn my dislike for fans, some of ’em anyway, into a comical presentation about social identity theory. So I have to finish those notes, and find the gaudiest team gear I have, to help prove the point.

bluesky / cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
6
Oct 25

I hastily wrote some words I’m calling a poem

I can tell already, this is going to be one of those busy weeks. Next week, too, probably. Why not? Definitely this week. So it’ll be light here. Lighter than usual. And, already it’s so light you’d have to do a lot of reps to see any gains. But, hey, at least we have Catober — and that’s been wonderful. Click that link and you can see them all, and even scroll back through previous years.

Class prep today. We’re talking about … two stories in my criticism class. We’ll talk about storytelling in the org comm class. I know a thing or two about storytelling — or so I tell myself. The challenge is to distill something useful down into 75 minutes. Which is really about 50 minutes given the usual pace of things. But actually 40 or 45 once you put in videos. That’s one of the challenges, anyway.

I was thinking about news today, clearly.

A split screen shot tells the tale. One man’s words and a webcam in a two-box would win the nightly news.

If we still had value in the requisite things.

[image or embed]

— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.bsky.social) October 6, 2025 at 4:49 PM

Another good idea might be a serial on local stories that don’t get broader traction (because 🤷‍♂️🌎🤷‍♂️) but still deserve your attention.

This could be a desk-reader sort of show, with some simple EGs and either the occasional local reporter or other topical expert for a bit of back and forth.

[image or embed]

— Kenny Smith (@kennysmith.bsky.social) October 6, 2025 at 7:31 PM

There’s a lot we can do in new ways that use successful older formulas. Perhaps not wholesale for reasons more than just IP and rights, but there’s a lot to be said about previous success stories. One of those things always has to do with what made them successful. It’s not always lighting in a bottle, but the lighting bolt of inspiration. What we already know works is pretty inspirational. Or it should be.

I went out to look at the fig tree. It produced no figs this year. No figs that I saw, anyway. So I guess we cut it back too far. I guess it is now just a tree. And a home to one happy little spider.

I wonder what that will look like by the time I get around to going back out there for my next inspection.

A few shots from a weekend evening bike ride.

On my way out, the sun was a golden clarion, a beautiful guide, a warning faster and more provocative than an hourglass. The sum was a lot of things on that ride.

In roughly the same spot, on the way back, a half-hour later, but on the other side of the road … the moon, which watched a blanketed horse chomp away at grass. We could write a poem about that.

Oh! Dear sweet friend of four legs,
many sugar cubes, and memories and years.

It will be chilled this evening, but your quilted blanket
eases my guilt when I am inside, and you are out.

The moon will keep you company,
and the fruit trees beside you will rustle.

The grass will be a sweat treat on your breath
when I come for your morning nuzzle.

I didn’t say it would be good poetry.

Just a bit up the road, there’s a lovely stand of corn. It’ll be plowed under soon, I’m sure. But there are still a few days left in which to avoid the rusted, brittle golden stalks and admire what’s left of the verdant shades of summer.

Fall, dear reader, is full of complexities. I’m lousy at dealing with them.

So, like I said, light week. But, here you still got four photos, a poem, and, of course, there’s Catober. You can get by with high reps. Just keep clicking that refresh button.

adventures / Monday / photo / Rowan — Comments Off
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.

cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
22
Sep 25

I’m not saying I rode with a ghost; I’m also not not saying that

I’ll just tell you, straight away, that this is going to be a full week for me. I’ll probably feel it for the next three weeks. Which is to say that this week is busy, and I’ll insist upon taking an extra moment or two next week to recover. And, because of that, the week after that, I’ll be in this same boat again.

Also, I have papers to review, extra meetings to attend and some things to write. And I’ve been writing other things. Maybe some of them will see the light of day at some point. Plus the regular work, of course. Well, it keeps you busy, as they say. Anyway, you’ll probably just get a lot of scenes this week. So let’s do that!

Here’s a little sunset montage I made, but I don’t think I ever shared it. Nothing to it, just a few extra photos, literal over-the-shoulder photos.

I went on a circular ride on Saturday. A crude circle. A child’s unsteady drawing of a circle, if you looked at the map, and if the child did not yet understand circles. The wind was in my face for about three-quarters of the ride. Especially right here. I’d been ducking one breeze and then took a hard left, thing I could be relieved because that wind would be on my shoulder, but, no, an even more annoying breeze was in my nose.

A bridge near us has been closed for a good long while. Closed in a “Yes, this applies to you” way. But now it is open. If you go over that bridge you’re pretty quickly into another township, which makes for three or four in one quick effort out that direction. This was from today’s ride.

And on that same ride, as I paced myself back toward the neighborhood and the approved low-light roads … the sun is telling these spent cornstalks good night.

It’s not as dark as I look, and I made it back into the evening roads. It’s a nine-mile route with bike lanes or extremely low traffic or both. And, if you’re really desperate, you can add in another five miles of pre-approved neighborhood roads to the mix. (I have negotiated this with my lovely bride in a safety-first way and, since, have only annoyed her with my choices twice.)

So I made it back to that area, and that’s where this photo is from.

I was on that road because one stretch of those 14 miles of evening roads is now being undone and redone. It’d be great for the gravel bike, but that’s not what I was riding. I suppose the good news is that I was able to share that chip and seal news with the local bike ride group we’re forming up. Way out here, where the heavy land and the green sands meet, we have a hardy little bunch of eight people in that riding chat, and that doesn’t include one of other just-too-far-away riding buddies and a few of the notorious no-one-can-hold-their-wheel beasts that I see out from time to time.

I rode with one of those guys for a while today. I was just a few miles in and then I heard the noise come along side. Big man. He turned his head to look at me for about two pedal strokes, wordlessly, and then moved to the front. I sat on his wheel for about three miles, turning out 25 and 26 mile per hour splits. I had to let him go, and he had the decency to turn a different direction at the next road.

I see him on Strava. I think I saw him off in the distance on a ride earlier this year, when I chased a taillight for miles, but then it disappeared I know not how. The locals say that, on a quiet evening, if you listen really closely, you can hear him sigh, shift gears and pedal into the phantom world.

I bet he would have enjoyed Saturday’s wind.