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15
Dec 25

No fingers were (seriously) hurt in the production of this post

I was overdue for a trip to the inconvenience center. We take our recycling there. Cardboard in these bins, mixed recyclables in those bins, and so on. I also had to drop off four deck chairs. We inherited with the place, who knows how long they’ve been here, but at the end of a third summer with us, they were showing their age. The fabric was tearing from the aluminum frames, and we upgraded with nature’s IKEA, wicker chairs.

I’d asked the man that runs the place if he would take them, and he, a man of few words, pointed me to this other bin. I said they were aluminum. He pointed to that bin. I said they also had a fabric covering. He pointed to that bin. So, unless he was telling me to jump in the thing, I took that as permission. That was my last visit, some weeks ago. And today was the day. Only, the chairs filled up the vehicle. And we still had the two large containers of recyclables and a small factory’s worth of cardboard we’ve accumulated in the last couple of months, plus some that had been hiding from me in the basement. After some time, we managed to get everything inside, as I despaired over taking multiple trips. It is only an inconvenience center because it is across town. But, eventually everything was ready to travel, and I wished away every police officer between here and there. Surely I was breaking some ordinances about safe transit. Some of the windows could not be used for defensive driving.

As soon as I got to the place, I realized I did not have the community hang tag. There’s a big blinking sign, everyone must present their tag. Mine was in the other car, hanging, helpfully, from the rear view mirror. So I got into the place, backed in as you’re supposed to, and then hustled. Cardboard, cardboard, cardboard, all thankfully broken down already. One tub of mixed recyclables in, a second one turned over and dumped into the giant bin. We are really saving the earth today. By this time, a few other cars and trucks have come in to do their bit for the planet, and now I have to weave around them.

I manhandled these four deck chairs at one time. Not heavy, but ungainly as a one-person job. Plus there’s the bobbing and weaving around Old Man Coveralls who is doing his work. As I got to the bins for the chairs, the one the man pointed at weeks ago, I realized that I needed to readjust my grip so that I could heave and/or ho. This was the point where I pinched two fingers on my right hand. Earlier in this choir I’d pinched the ring finger. It hurt. Here I pinched the middle and index finger. It was one of those slow motion things. I had time to silently say goodbye to the tips of my fingers, thank them for their help over the years, and wish them well.

Before I had time to contemplate life without the top part of two fingers, though, I was able to readjust the chairs, sit them down, and relieve the unforgiving grip of metal on skin on metal.

Chairs deposited. Fingers OK. Hang tag never requested.

That was Saturday morning. Saturday evening we went to the cinema to watch a movie about propaganda, power, and epistemology.

Here’s my review: not as good as the first one, but the story needed to be completed. In fact, in a less cynical and more artistic world they’d just combined the two and call it a terrific movie. I love that these two movies were so devoted to practical effects. Everyone involved was obviously having a great time with their work. I love the way we portray what we think the 1930s thought the future would look like.

I’m still not certain how a hallucination has prequels.

Saturday night, into Sunday morning, we had snow. This is the view from the wee hours, as I was going to bed, thinking about getting up early to go outside. Unless it melted!

It did not melt. It was a fat, heavy snow. We had six inches and change when we went outside. It was still snowing. A few passes with the shovel proved that this job called for the snow blower. So, glad that I retrieved it from the shed yesterday, I filled it with oil, filled it with gas, and we cleaned the drive, so my lovely bride could get out of the house.

She was back before I finished the job, because the roads beyond were still impassable at the time.

All of the roads looked much better by the afternoon. And the sky cleared up beautifully. It was the perfect way to see the snow, from indoors.

The problem becomes the next few days of harsh temperatures. But, hey, I’m inside and warm and the driveway is clear. I’m not sure what else I can worry about right now.

Oh yes, the packing. And winter travel. I’m taking the rest of the week off from the site. Family time begins, though the work continues. I will see you here dashing, and dancing, on Dec. 22nd.

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1
Jul 25

We are back

We woke up early. We got on the plane at Heathrow, our last long walk of the trip, which was punctuated by two long walks through the Milano airport after gate changes. And, sure, you have to get off the plane and through the U.S. Customs checkpoints, but the airport walk on the way back home never feels that long.

The march to the plane, however, that can take a while.

The airport security staff confiscated my toothpaste, apologetically. Too big, by volume, despite having made it to and through Heathrow on the way over. Ah well, if that’s the worst part of the day …

We were in Club World on British Airways, which means you get your own little pod, which means the seats lay all the way back, and also that you get more attention on a six or eight hour flight than anyone needs. I just wanted to watch the movies.

First up, Mickey 17, which was highly anticipated by fans of the book, of which I’d never heard. I think they missed. It was Douglas Adams without the funny. But Robert Pattinson wasn’t bad.

I got through about four minutes of the Tom Hanks movie, “Here,” and decided I wasn’t willing to watch that on a plane.

So I watched The Amateur, which is exactly what you imagined after seeing the trailer.

Now I suppose I’ll have to watch the 1981 version, for comparison’s sake.

For the last leg of the trip, and I couldn’t time this much better, I managed to just sneak in all of Oppenheimer. First time I’ve watched it; not sure why it took so long. Pretty sure I need to see it again, if nothing else to improve the audio. Probably there are some interesting historical tidbits I missed as well.

If I may trade heavily, and unfairly, on both stereotypes, I’m not really sure how the Barbieheimer summer worked. The crossover just seems so farfetched. (Then again, Barbie was fine, and this is a Christopher Nolan masterpiece. Or Barbie was a feminist signpost and this was a Christopher Nolan masterpiece. So what do I know?)

Anyway, the plane landed on time. We made it through customs with no problem. The luggage collected, the last walk of the trip was through the airport. My in-laws went this way to meet their driver. We went that way to get to an Uber which took us to our car, and then back home.

And now I’m going to sleep for two, maybe three days.

So this is it for the week. More here Monday. Until then!

adventures / movies / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
17
Jun 25

Big ol’ jet airliner

Yep, that’s me. I’m sitting over a wing. The better to ensure there are no monsters out there. You might be asking yourself how I got here — by car. You might be asking yourself why I am referring to “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet,” which turns 62 years old this fall — it is still terrifying, but for different reasons. But the questions you should be asking: Where are you going? And: “What did you watch along the way?”

I’ll give you a day or two to figure out the answer to the first question. And I’ll give you a very small and indirect hint with the answers to the second question.

First, I watched “Captain America: Brave New World.”

It could have been better, but they were working from a thin comic book concept here. Anthony Mackie deserves better. And how Harrison Ford got involved will remain a mystery. Indeed, it is the copy book of MCU movies.

So, in other words, a good airplane movie. Passed the time. Filed it away. Pleased I didn’t spend time that could have been better spent doing or watching anything else.

Which brings us to our second film of the flight. And, again, Honest Trailer nails it.

There are pumpkins in North Africa, expressions some 1700 years before the technology that prompted them was invented and a newspaper in ancient Rome, where no history is observed.

Look, there are several reasons one makes a movie. Fan service, the box office, high art, or marketing overreach. Others are misguided movie execs, to right a wrong or wrong a right. One of those reasons is “to give Ridley Scott something to do,” and this film is that.

Anyway, the plane has safely landed. And if you’re plotting runtime to try to determine where I am, or otherwise trying to glean some information from the photo above, let me tell you I also watched the first episode of 1923 to complete the flight. We have arrived at our lodgings. Now we fight off the temptation to sleep — didn’t do that on the plane, as usual — so that we may laughingly ward off jet lag.

Tomorrow: more hints.

cycling / movies / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
16
Jan 25

One Short Day

Because everything is lining up, and because it was cold and all of the little people are back in school we went to the movies and caught a matinee. I’ll give you one guess what we saw.

We saw the play, in London in 2015. It was one of those things where we had an afternoon, and were probably ready for an evening that moved at a regular pace, and so we walked over to the ticket booth where you can get late tickets inexpensively. One of the options was Wicked, and so we enjoyed that on the West End. This was the curtain.

The movie, part one, is what movies should be: a lot of fun. Most of what you saw were practical effects. The tulips were plentiful. The costumes were fantastic. They were, perhaps, the element most to the original, with just enough modern post-dystopian steampunk flare to pop in high definition.

Apparently the singing was done live. Sometimes that seemed obvious, not in a bad way. And other times it seemed incredibly impractical. Ga-linda is terrible. Ariana Grande is great in the role, but the character is terrible. Cynthia Erivo is so wonderful it’s difficult, even knowing the play, to imagine how they turn her from protagonist to antagonist in the second movie.

Kristin Chenoweth and Idina Menzel, who originated the protagonist and deuteragonist on stage, have small parts. I said it’s a shame that no one is still left from the Wizard of Oz that they could drop in somewhere. But I said that in the car, without looking this up. According to People, there were three surviving cast members still with us late last year, 84 years later!

My one problem — aside from the standard musical issue that at least one song is weaker than the rest — is that someone brings into a classroom this new invention, they call it a “cage” and, in it, the animals will be kept, so they can be held in their natural condition. Which is to say, without a voice. (A lot of that element of the movie seems pointed and modern.) But here are people with bicycles, electricity, the most over-engineered train in the world and the coolest library ever, but they’ve only just invented cages?

I suppose the order of development means a lot in a fictional society, too.

Anyway, it’s a fine movie. Watch Wizard of Oz again before you see Wicked. You’ll find more of the Easter eggs that way.

It was snowing when we left the theater.

That’s just beginning of a week-and-a-half of actual winter. I bet they never have to deal with that in Emerald City. The wizard probably takes care of it.

I had a perfectly uninspiring 38-mile bike ride this evening. I averaged about 20 miles an hour, and near the end I thought, I should grab an image. Just then I was riding here.

And that fit. That’s how impressive the ride was. You might think my little Zwift avatar is riding through a cave there, but no. No, he is riding to his death. Death by asphyxiation, for he is riding through the heart of a volcano. And, surely, while holding a 24 mile per hour pace through the thing my avatar would be breathing hard, and pulling in more sulfur than anything.

Volcanoes vary, but the gases they produce are primarily water vapor, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide (SO2), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), nitrogen, argon, helium, neon, methane, carbon monoxide and hydrogen.

No way my guy lives through that, right?

He’s probably got a better shot at being safely whisked away to Oz.

adventures / cycling / history / markers / movies / photo / video / We Learn Wednesdays / Wednesday — Comments Off
13
Sep 23

Going fast, and also seeing things slowly

I have two classes tomorrow, so a substantial part of yesterday, and almost all of today, have been spent in making notes for myself, trying to think up ways to keep students’ attention and give them some useful information. This is always a learning process, both in terms of pedagogical techniques but, sometimes, in the actual material. I learned a few things yesterday. Now I get to share that information with others. That’s a lot of fun. Hopefully they’ll think so, too.

Just kidding. I’m working on a lecture a few weeks from now. But I did learn some things. One of the things I learned is that some of the reading materials have disappeared, and so I had to scramble for suitable replacements. Another thing I learned involved something arcane and technical. The journalist in me would have benefited from the existence of this technology, but not understood why or how it worked. Sorta like me and, say, an important converter in a hydroelectricity plant, or the part between solar panels and light switches.

What was really fun, and quite gratifying, is when I get to a new section of notes and text for this lecture that will take place in a few weeks and realize, “Hey, I know how to do this. I’ve been doing this for a long time, as it turns out.”

Can’t buy the sort of confidence that comes with steady realization, I’ve always said, since at least the beginning of this sentence.

The one big break from all of that today was a bike ride this morning. Here we’d just been chatting, when I looked down and we were soft pedaling through the low 20s.

On this particular route we follow that road for some miles until it ends. Then we turn left onto a road that parallels the river. The road is mostly flat, but there is the slightest little gradient. And my lovely bride will crush a false flat. I could still see her when she got to the next turn, but I didn’t see her turn. Despite having a clear view down that next road, I didn’t see her there. She wouldn’t have continued on straight ahead, owing to the logistics of the ride, but no can see.

So I spent the next four miles putting in some of the ride’s best splits, just to catch back up to her, which I finally did. We talked again for a moment, which was mostly me just trying to get out “You’re fast!” Then I went past her. I held her off for four miles, after which she dropped me with a “Why’d you do that?” look.

Because being chased is every bit as fun as chasing. Moreso when your legs are beginning to feel pretty decent again. (That only took two months.)

Also, I set three Strava PRs on that ride. All of which is why there’s only one shot in the video. I was too busy, and then too tired, to get more shots.

The seventh installment of my efforts in tracking down the local historical markers did not come from today’s ride, but rather a weekend expedition. Doing this by bike is one good way to go a little slower, see more things and learn some roads I wouldn’t otherwise try. Counting today’s installment, I’ll have visited 15 of the 115 markers found in the Historical Marker Database. What will we learn a bit about today? I’m so glad you asked!

Downtown is an old town here. Quaint houses. Signs on the walls displaying the original or locally famous previous residents. Hitching posts out by the modern curb. Lots of cars, but the whole vibe. It’s a charming little place, and houses like this are part of why.

Built in 1724 by a second generation immigrant, Samuel Shivers had one of the first houses in this town, and it is still today a fine example of several different generations of architecture. Historians would point out that there’s four centuries of work here, included the remnants of Samuel’s father’s 1692 cabin. The house we see today, then, shows us work that spans four centuries. The door, the hinges and the rest of the hardware there are period original, but I don’t know which … again, several centuries of work are in here.

The mantel is original. Some of the window glass is original. It wasn’t long before the Shivers family needed more space, so Samuel bought a nearby tavern and had it moved onto his property. Samuel’s daughter and her husband took over the house in 1758. That man, Joseph Shinn, helped write the state constitution in 1776. Their son, Isiah Shinn, took over the house. He was a state lawmaker and militia general. Isiah presided over more additions in 1813, adding a dining room and two more bedrooms, and this was the look on Main Street until 1946. The woman that owned it then made a lot of changes and whoever produced this sign did not like it. But for the past few years a preservationist has owned The Red House and is restoring it to its original style.

Apparently, the first film produced by Samuel Goldwyn in his studio Goldwyn Pictures in 1917 was shot in this town, and all of the interior scenes take places in this house, or on sets modeled after it.

The whole movie is online.

The Red House, also, has this fancy plaque on the front wall.

I touched it. It’s some sort of vulcanized rubber. But the rest of the house, though, it’s something else. Some day I’m going to have to work my way into an invite.

What already seems like six or seven years ago, somehow, but was merely last Wednesday, I showed you the marker that stood by itself, with nothing to memorialize. It was a fire ring. There’s one other in town, and it is within just a few feet of The Red House.

And even though, last week, I shared a screen cap of the Google Street View car’s photo of that now-missing fire ring, it’s important to see it for yourself. So now here is a fire ring.

This all seems pretty obvious now. It sounds like this.

I’m just tapping the ring with the metal head of my bike pump but the sound really jumps. Imagine, years ago, hearing this in the middle of a quiet night, when someone full of adrenalin is striking this ring. “FIRE! COME QUICK!” I bet it was an effective system for it’s time. The Red House’s sign says it has survived, among other things, fires, so that ring must have been an effective call to the community.

Also, ‘Old Discipline’? What a great name. What a great name for anything.

If you’ve missed some of the early markers, look under the blog category We Learn Wednesdays. What will we learn next week? Something quite unique indeed. Come back and see!