On Wednesday night we had a flat. And the spare was also flat. And the compressor was dead. (You don’t have a compressor? Every car should have a compressor. You never know when your spare is flat.) Anyway, a friend picked up The Yankee and she went to get my car and my compressor (every car should have a compressor) and I changed the flat, which had a nail, to the spare, which just needed air. And in the amount of time that took I could feel the symptoms — scratchy throat, glassy eyes — coming on.
So I’ve had sinuses or allergies or both since then. Lots of decongestants, very little breathing and all the weird medicine head and light fever sensations since then. And I really, really like to breathe.
Anyway, there’s not a lot here from the weekend because we had a casual weekend.
We did see this show, however, which was a lot of fun. Brody Dolyniuk covered Queen tunes with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra. We had dinner Saturday night at an Irish pub and wondered what they would open with. I believe it was “I Want to Break Free.” And then what do you close with? “We Will Rock You,” of course, unfortunately. In between they did a wide range of the catalog including “Under Pressure,” which I don’t listen to much anymore. (I think it is better that way. Maybe it becomes something more special. Maybe I can always, then, keep track of where I heard it last. The last time I was at a Jason’s Deli, alone, eating one sad little dinner. It was right after David Bowie died.) They did a chill bump-causing cover of “Who Wants to Live Forever.” I mean just stirring. And, also, this, just before the end, which was of course a singalong:
We had a beautiful weekend here, how about you? When the clouds finally moved out on Saturday it got up into the 60s. And it stayed sunny on Sunday, too. Early spring? I’ll take it.
I had a nice medium-sized run. It should have been longer, but that’s the way of it sometimes. I did seven miles and then got hungry. I guess I needed more than a bowl of cereal. So I went inside and had a sandwich and went back out. By then, though, I’d cooled off, so I only did three more miles.
So this means I ran 10 miles and that was disappointed.
I do not know what is happening.
But! I saw the first new green stuff of the year:
Just behind that, was this:
Now, you can walk or run parallel to that fence and it just … ends. There’s no corner, no gate, no extra posts where the wire should be. It just stops. So I’m not sure how this is supposed to keep anyone in or out.
Down the other way, about a half mile, was this handsome old American sycamore:
In a few more weeks, maybe, the trees will be in bloom. Won’t that be a sight?
On Sunday I rode my bike to campus. I’d forgotten to bring something home on Friday and I needed it and it was such a beautiful day and so I slow-pedaled for about an hour and that was delightful. Just a beautiful day. I shot some video on my bike ride that is now on the front page of the site. I like that path, and I like the scenery, but I was trying to be sure I didn’t hit a few walkers while I was shooting that. I’ll have to go back and try again when there’s something on the trees.
The new video on the front page of the site looks something like this:
I just happened to be walking by the “river” outside of our building and saw that bright green glow of the moss. That caught my eye. Not Spring!, as a season, but the season of Almost Spring!. It gets your attention. I stood there admiring it for a moment and I realized I was in the right spot, and the sun was at the proper angle, to carry out a little light show.
Standard Monday. A lot of email, and then wondering around and the doing of a few things to be useful in some other capacity.
I finished a book at lunch today, The Friends of Eddie Coyle by George Higgins, the former U.S. attorney who would go on to write some 30 books. It is a crime novel, and probably some 70 percent or more of the text are quotes and it zips along. I think I read it over three or four lunches. Everyone says it has the best dialog around. In it, you get an idea of what people think, even a U.S. attorney, who had the job of prosecuting bad guys, thinks it sounds like to live in that world.
It was Higgins’ first novel and Dennis Lehane, another wildly successful novelist of the genre, says in the foreword that everyone is just trying to be Higgins now, even Higgins, was, he says, in his much-too-short career.
I probably won’t go read more of him, because I don’t read a lot of fiction in general. (Today I checked out a memoir, a biography and two history books.) I picked Eddie Coyle up sometime back at the library because the author Elmore Leonard said it was his favorite book, and I like Leonard’s work. I would watch the movie, however.
The best part was it didn’t really have a natural beginning. You were just thrust into things as the reader. And the end, well, the end had its own circular swirl that suggests, perhaps, why Higgins had decided to leave the law and go to the typewriter.
Good book, though. I’m going to read a war story, next, I suppose.
This evening in honor of 12 years of being together, The Yankee and I went out for dinner. We went to the local ichiban steakhouse, which is the preferred style of meal for select ritual occasions. I think this is the fifth or sixth different actual restaurant we’ve enjoyed over the years. And this one is the least crowded of them all.
We had our own private table. No, by the time the chef arrived the neighboring table was standing up to leave. We had our own private room. I do this romantic dinner setting stuff right.
And the chef said maybe three sentences the entire meal. Oh, sure, he warmed up by doing all of the latest spins and twists and twirls, but it reminded me of the clown character that is playing happy, but really is sad. Since there were no other children for him to show off for, I paid close attention. Soon after expressing his sorrow through the twirling of his spatula, though, he just cooked. Which was fine. I’ve seen most of the tricks and the jokes aren’t really all of that great.
I did find myself missing the choo-choo onion volcano, though.
Boy, that’s not a sentence you heard and thought I have to steal that!
Anyway, 12 years. It was a dinner party and we played a board game and then the next day we were hanging out again and we later decided that was the proper date to observe, for observational purposes. And on the night in which we observed 12 years of being together I got another version of one of the truly great moments in our relationship. I told a story, recounting my side of a text conversation we’d had a while back, taking on this pretend frustration for theatrical effect, and she laughed for approximately six straight minutes. The seriously involved kind of laugh, the face scrunched up, doubled over hands on knees, you don’t let up sort of laugh.
I’d trade a lot for those moments. It’d be foolish not to.
After I parked this morning I walked by this tree on the way into the office this morning:
At lunch time, I saw this tree:
Different trees, of course. Different species, even. But they’re just a block away. That was pretty much the day, outside.
The sun was shining, probably for about 15 minutes altogether, this morning on my way into the office. At least I had those bright, pretty skies for the brief time I could spend outside this morning. It was gray later. I didn’t look for other tree fruits on my way out. We’d progressed to a full on misting event as day turned into evening. It rained tonight, so we ran the gamut.
Gamut is an old English word, stemming from medieval Latin. It originally had to do with a musical note, but turned into an expression that discusses the entire musical scale.
On my way to the car I was also thinking about this song:
That’s a cover on an album of covers that won a grammy for folk album of the year in the early 1990s. The song was written by Janis Ian. Janis Ian is still playing, some 50 years into her career. And she seems like a pretty hilarious grandmother on Twitter, too. She had 34 dates in 2015 and has four booked for this summer, according to her website. And, look, here they are, Ian and Griffith together, in 1993:
Anyway, that song, for 20-some years, has seemed to me like every flatland piece of America in the 20th century.
Here’s something from the 19th century, December 11, 1889 in The New York Times:
That was the “then,” portion of the story. Which brings us to the turn of the century, William McKinley’s America:
“Thus a heterogeneous mass of people poured into this part of the Northwest Territory, good and bad being pretty evenly mixed. The Southerners were sound material, yet the bad among them were very bad indeed.”
Let’s discuss them!
“Today their descendants — many of them, at least — are the typical Hoosiers that one hears of in the newspapers. They carefully elude the refining touch of education and even as far as possible the census taker.”
If they’d just talk to the poor downtrodden census taker, we mean, he’s just some geek we found in Ohio, then everything else would be better off for those people in Indiana. Poor buggers.
“Down in some of the State’s southern counties they are at their worst.”
Ain’t that always the way, dear reader?
“In Brown County, an almost impenetrable section of hills, they are in their glory.”
Less than one percent of the state lives there today. But the county only reports a poverty rate of 11.4 percent, with 22 percent having at least one college degree. The arts and being outdoors getaway destination are the chief industries there these days.
“They would be as much at home in the mountains of Tennessee and Alabama as in the Hoosier hill ranges.”
Come again?
“They are indifferent farmers, and have no interest in the world beyond the hog quotations in the St. Louis or Cincinnati market.”
I could go plow that field, but whatever. ‘Didja you hear ’bout what Mertle’s sow said in Missourah ‘other day?
“But, as if to mark the difference, the adjoining county of Bartholomew contains a different people.”
Now, Bartholomew is about the same size, and a full 28 percent of them have college degrees and there’s an 11.9 percent poverty rate. Cummins Diesel is based there. Chuck Taylor, the sneaker guy, was from there, just like Vice President Mike Pence and NASCAR champ Tony Stewart. A popular cartoonist, a software CEO and the former president of thee National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues all call Bartholomew County home. In the 1900 census, taken in the months just after this article, Bartholomew was the mean population center of the U.S. Except that was probably incorrect because of those lyin’, census avoidin’ Hoosiers.
“They, too, are among the Southerners who came to Indiana, but they have kept pace with time’s advance, and are thrifty farmers or active tradespeople.”
Not at all like their slovenly cousins in Brown County.
“Similar contrasts might be pointed out in other sections.”
You go elsewhere the differences are the same. We suppose. We can’t be sure, so we’re speaking in generalities. Not like we have the Internet, yet.
“Even in going south from Indianapolis for a ride of an hour on the railroad one encounters the original Hoosier in his worst aspect.”
You get out of the city, God be with you. We’ve seen it. Have you ever been to Pennsylvania?
Hard to imagine exactly who The Times liked back then. Odd that so many people still think they have such a narrow view of things.
Monday / photo / running — Comments Off on Photos from the weekend 30 Jan 17
I crossed this creek just after mile two, when there was the coming promise of my calf loosening up and the mistaken belief I could stay warm. It felt like 20° when I started. Small ponds have a thin skin of ice on them. I ran 18 miles. I do not know what is happening.
It was right after this that I wrote this joke about the buzzards and hawks flying overhead It was a treatise on gallows humor, but I was only three miles into my run and that was a little too early for that sort of thing. Three is a warmup, I had 15 to go. Also, at the end, I got to track my miles. I’m doing a year-long challenge and the app says there are some 100,000 participants now. Look where I am:
Not bad for January.
I’d topped the penultimate hill right around 13.1 miles, which equaled the most I’d ever run. And I was close to home, but still had some ground to cover. So I went into a downhill stretch telling myself, over and over, to hold this pace. Hold this pace.
It wasn’t much, but it was jogging. Until the downhill became too steep, when I had to walk a bit on weary, unsteady legs. But I felt good because each step was a new record and I knew, I insisted, I was going to jog UP the last hill — a hill long and steep enough I can’t sprint its entirety on my bike — and there was no way I was cheating myself out of that. I was determined. Besides, by the time I reached that last hill I’d be about three miles from done and you can do anything for three miles.
So up that last hill I jogged, and I was then making bargains with myself, and building strategies to finish this thing. There were places to cut it short, but I was setting personal bests with each step and you don’t end that early. You can do anything for three miles. Which was an argument I began losing in mile 16. And then I couldn’t find my turn and it was cold and I’d been doing this, pretty badly mind you, but doing it, for hours. And then right at mile 17 I saw this and risked bending over for it.
This chunk of cheap molded plastic is the battleship from the board game of the same name and it was in the road at the church near the house. I could be inside in a quarter of a mile, and I wanted to be, because mile 15 was weary and slow and mile 16 might have been worse. But I had to run to 18. So I squeezed this plastic battleship in my double-gloved hand and said “I am running the last mile.”
And I did.
I wasn’t even especially sore the next day.
It snowed yesterday. We took Allie The Black Cat into the backyard:
She walked around on the deck. She prowled around on the handrail and snooped under the grill cover and slinked around in the yard a bit. She did this several times:
