Philadelphia

memories / Philadelphia / photo / site / sport / Wednesday — Comments Off on I can see mulch and top soil again
12
Aug 26

I can see mulch and top soil again

What a fine day. Productive and rewarding in several senses, but not in all of them. One can’t be productive in every sense. We weren’t designed for that. How else would we have developed imagination, hope, and ambition? How else would we have ever learned to fly, go to space, develop life saving vaccines, study the planet and what we’re doing to it? If we could do everything all at once, how would we have internalized concepts like dreams, lists, and ways to judge our neighbors against our efforts? Someone had to have the idea of emulating the birds, and s/he and their ilk were scorned for generations, until one day it wasn’t a flight of fancy, it was a flight. And you couldn’t do that or go to space or any of our other marvels, really, without the ability to create and pursue lists. We’re talking about human pursuit here! You can’t pursue everything at once. The neighbors would stare and talk.

I hope not too many people are doing that around here, because we’ve given them something to judge of late. There’s a lot of weeding to be done, but it’s been so deliriously hot. The temperatures settled into the low 90s today, however, and I went outside in the morning and pulled things out of the ground for a while.

My first job was a summertime thing working for one of my teachers. She was a horticulturist, and she had a summer side hustle landscaping one of the big houses on the mountain. The husband was a surgeon. A plastic surgeon, I think. Or a heart surgeon. Something that set him up well enough to marry a woman who descended from old money. (People knew the family name.) It was a gorgeous house, made to look ancient by the stone work that didn’t come from our red clay hills. It had a commanding view of the city in the valley below, the city her family had left a few generations before. The city where her family name was on one of the skyscrapers downtown, which you could see standing at their sink, or at their pool, or in any part of the house that looked to the northwest. They had a Rolls Royce Phantom 2 in the garage, giant oil paintings of themselves in the foyer that was, itself, bigger than any house I’d ever seen. And they had landscaping needs that meant after we’d worked our way across the whole of the yard it was time to go back to the other side and start again. I was in the 8th grade and it was incredibly hot and that job taught me a lot, namely that I didn’t want to do that kind of work. My teacher also taught me about Tracy Chapman that summer. Everyone knew Fast Car, but she talked about that debut album and the followup, Crossroads and how somehow that had inspired her to go into the Peace Corps. That didn’t make sense at the time, but I guess I can see it now.

Anyway, I was thinking about that today, pulling weeds in my own flowerbeds, stuffing lawn bags and sweating and listening to Tracy Chapman. I was also hoping none of the neighbors would walk by, notice me doing all that and giving me the nod of disapproval.

“About time he got around to that.”

“The last owners would have never.”

“No they would not.”

Yeah, well, they had kids and I’m guessing the children got sent out to do their share of the work. Or they hired someone. We’ve done that. It’s been … spotty. Sometimes great. Sometimes aggressive. Sometimes questionable.

Anyway, one man did walk by and, even across the yard, you could hear that he was on the phone. I paused to listen, wondering if he’d say “He’s actually doing it. I know. I know! No really, he is!”

I didn’t get it all today. I don’t know that I can, or want to get it all. Pretty much the entire Tracy Chapman catalog is great, much of it peerless, but it would need to be much larger for me to get of this weeding finished. Plus, there’s other work to be done. But there are things on the southern side of the house that I didn’t want to get choked out by undesirables, so I did that for a while, until it was time to come in and cool off. Because while it was only 88 degrees, I still managed to do a credible sweat test this morning. But two hours, noon, 88 degrees, and three comically large bags of now dead green things are ready to be disposed of. The bulk of the work on the south side of the house is done. I could still probably pull weeds for another hour there, plus a good 20 minute weed-eating session. But enough is enough.

Also, we had afternoon plans.

A while back we met a man at a conference who runs this development program for kids where soccer is the entryway, but they’re ultimately working to create scenarios where preschool through high school kids and beyond can build healthy bodies and minds. They have an indoor park, outdoor fields and people show up for the soccer, but find a full slate of programming and services for their community. It sounds amazing and so today we went to see the operation.

There was some high school pick-up soccer underway on their indoor pitch. No one invited me to play, thank goodness. We saw the rest of their facilities, which are lovely and growing. It’s not a community center, it’s more than that. We talked with the people that run the place for about 90 minutes. They’re six years in and still growing and doing some great work. It’s not just sport. Sport gets kids in the door, but then there is programming that helps the children learn about things like nutrition, interpersonal skills, money management, confidence building, and so on. They aren’t trying to build soccer players, the goal is to help kids in ways that matter on a real and human level. It’s quite charming, they’re very passionate about it, and it’s easy to see why.

Sport, as we talk about in classes a lot, means a lot more than just what happens on the field. In one class I teach a section on the real values of youth sport — fair play, collaboration, health, socialization, discipline, rules, respect, etc… — and that’s what this organization is after, too. What’s really interesting, to me, when I talk about those life lessons with other people that played youth sports, even college students who aren’t that far removed from it themselves, they quickly see how it helped them. We don’t always realize it at the time, but it is apparent in retrospective. It is obvious the value we can offer people. It is a mystery there aren’t more deliberate programs just like that.

And when you compare that to the infamous travel ball experience … no contest.

Stuff on the site I’d like to do, since I mentioned it … There are two or three of the old running projects I’d like to return to, and I will. I have to wrap up the local markers project. Easy enough, and that’s the one I combine with bike rides anyway. When the weather turns. I want to return to the happy habit of scanning photos from old books. It’s time intensive, and that’s the problem, but ultimately it entertains me and makes this place look, determined to follow ancient thing.

Another thing I’d like to do more is diving into old newspaper clippings. It’s a great way to learn about a place, or remember about a place. But it seems odd to do that about places where I no longer live. And the place where I do live doesn’t have a wealth of digitized newsprint online. This could devolve into a “where do you belong?” paragraph, but this is Wednesday and while all of my projects on the site ideally would have a day of the week, roughly, the old existential issue is not a Wednesday item. (Wednesdays are for markers, if you’ll recall, and they will be so once again.

These projects one need only invest the time and I say the thing I always say to myself, “After so and so … then you can do that.” And that never changes, but it at least has the added advantage of being frustrating.

Tomorrow, back to the classwork. If I can bend my fingers to the keyboard.

adventures / baseball / cycling / Philadelphia / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off on If the sunset doesn’t distract you the scoreboard might
4
Aug 26

If the sunset doesn’t distract you the scoreboard might

Sometimes conceptualizing work requires several different techniques. Today’s involved handwriting a bunch of outline-style things from an old semester. Then I had to scribble between all of the lines, merging some things and separating other things. And then I typed all of that up and did it again, removing some things as I went. It sounds easy, and it is, but there’s a lot of thinking that goes on in between those scribbles and merging and separating. Eventually, that became a good stopping point, and I needed to clear the old cobweb attic so that I can return to this again later this week.

Next I need to go through, line by line, lesson by lesson, to make sure all of the dates and the units and the lectures and so on all line up. After that, I’ll have to go back through it once more and make sure the assignments all line up. And then that class will be prepared.

Then I’ll do all of that, more or less (sometimes more) for two more classes. Later this week, maybe by the weekend, this will pick up speed.

You know what didn’t pick up speed today? Me. I set out for an afternoon ride and there was no wind and no legs and that’s really all of there was to it. I did the first half of our river run, which takes you seven miles to, you guessed it, the river. Instead of turning left to follow the route I did something unusual and I turned right. A mile and change down the river road I turned right again, creating the beginning of my double back, as I pedaled through Warehouse Town. I found a map of that area that goes back to 1927. All of the roads we know today are on that map. The land would have been different, of course, they built those warehouses right up to the muddy edges of the slough.

That that road was there a century ago means some kind of bridge was there, too. Now I want to know how long that’s been the route. The little crossroads town has been around since the late 17th or early 18th century. People have probably used that little water inlet in one way or another for all of that time. What all is sitting out there in that muck?

Anyway, you can think about that when you aren’t riding too fast. But when I got into that town I turned left and headed home. For a change, there was no headwind, no wind at all, and so I just tried to keep my tempo up as well as I could and timed myself on little segments, to that tree line, to this stop sign, and so on. I had to get home, get cooled down and cleaned up.

We went across the river this evening to see a baseball game with some friends. Sat in the shade that the parking lot affords (the shade of a car, that is). Someone brought chicken nuggets and other people brought cookies and drinks and we brought some fancy bread snacks. The conversation was pleasant until the appointed time of walking into the stadium. We got in just in time to see the first run scored on a TV screen.

Tonight we were sitting well down the first base line, close to the fair pole. It was a warm evening in the sun until …

And then the latter ends turned into a perfectly lovely evening. And how could it not be a lovely evening? Nice people on either side of us, beautiful views, some woman taking her social media influencer photos below us. The good guys with a lead.

Also, the video board operator likes it when the all-star pitcher gets two strikes on batters on a bad team.

When the hometown team is at bat they have some slickly produced montages. I assume this is meant to be evocative of the city’s iconic clock tower.

Anyway, the good guys scored early, put three more up in the third and added an insurance run in the seventh. Jesus Luzardo scattered four hits across eight innings before giving way to Caleb Kilian, who closed out the game in just his second appearance. The big star of the night was the other new guy, three-time batting champ and four-time All-Star Luis Arraez, who was traded yesterday and drove in two tonight. He was somewhere between San Diego and Dallas when San Francisco moved him. I wonder if he even knows what hotel he’s staying in right now.

Well, tonight, at least, he’s on a winning team trying to move back up in their division. After tonight’s win they’re about five games back, I believe.

The production crew was excited to use the winning graphics package, for sure. The Liberty Bell light lit up and the fans went home happy.

Perhaps no one does local imagery better than these guys. They have a lot they can use, and they incorporate it all. The old Fightin Phils are haunting the stadium, a replica of the Liberty Bell is parked just outside. There are statues, there’s that clock imagery from above. And there’s the graphics with the bell, and a little restaurant bar in the park named after John Pass and John Stow, the two founders who cast, and recast, the bell.

They need more Ben Franklin and cheesesteaks, but there’s enough here they could just rotate through the years. Maybe it’s down to the whims of the Phanatic, himself now a timeless institution. Many schools and professional teams are steeped in their local or manufactured iconography, and they should be — it’s important. I’d tell you why, but I’m saving that for an in-class lecture this fall. Enroll and find out!

adventures / baseball / family / Friday / Philadelphia / photo — Comments Off on Yankees at Phillies
24
Jul 26

Yankees at Phillies

We went out for pizza last night at a place that serves pizza. This was the place where we discovered honey on pizza — and you should try that before you discount it. You should try it and then think about how you can start smuggling honey into your favorite pizza place because you’re going to start doing that because honey on pizza is good. Also, they were having open mic night last night. We did not sing. But we could have. And some of us would have fit right in.

Look, I don’t sing in front of people. Because what if I’m bad? And you have to weigh that against all of the other things that a person does in public without regard to judgement. So I applaud the people that pursue open mic night, fulfilling a dream, taking a shot, singing their truth, whatever it is. Good for them. I applaud the people who do the things I can not or will not do. But … ya know … listening to some of them … maybe I should?

Anyway, we heard five people while we had our pizza and I marveled at the honey on my pizza. And then a guy took himself to the little corner where the microphone was, introduced himself, said he’d driven an hour-and-a-half to be there, and was so young he talked about how he had to learn these 80s songs. Then he played them, and that young man was good.

So I will not.

This evening we went over the river and to the ball game. We did not have peanuts and Cracker Jack, and that was an oversight on my part. Saw a nice game, though. Both pitchers, Cam Schlitter for New York and Jesus Luzardo for the Phillies were perfect through three innings.

And then, in then Paul Goldschmidt turned a 2-0 sinker into a lead-off home in the fourth inning, just as the Yankees fans began a chant, and Phillies fans started to boo thunderously.

Not so much at the player, but the other people in the stands. That was a Mad Max moment, the sort of thing that make Philadelphia sports fans legendary. It was intense, and funny, and fun.

Here was a bang-bang play at second base. They went to instant replay. They slowed it down from every angle on the big screen and nothing looked definitive. They overturned the judge’s on-field call. That eventually led to a bases loaded moment, but nothing came of it.

That one run home run was the game. It was a true pitcher’s duel. But other things were also going on.

The Fanatic found a way to work in the biggest sporting news of the day. LeBron James is going to spend a little time here, which everyone will most assuredly react to in dignified ways.

I like to think the Phillies front office Slack channel was filled this afternoon with “Who’s got a Knicks jersey?” queries.

Now consider for a second, you’re the Fanatic. You have big feet. You have big furry hands. You have a circumference. You’ve got a basketball. You’re dribbling on grass. And you’re doing it pretty well, all things being equal. And then he backed Not Patrick Ewing to the rim, and jammed it home.

The basketball hype is going to be easy for the next little bit. One of the best players of all time is going championship hunting in your venue? That’ll sell tickets.

And the fans are ready for it, already.

The LED lights across the field, over the right field foul line.

The Liberty Bell light, which stayed silent this evening. When the Phillies hit home runs the light change, hydraulics move the structure, and there’s a stock gong sound. It’s pretty cool. There’s a place in the park called Pass and Stow, named after the two men who cast the famous bell. There’s a replica outside the stadium. This is inside. It is, I am reliably informed, not the actual Liberty Bell.

The sunset.

A different moment in the same sunset.

And scoreboard signage.

My mother-in-law thought the first six innings were a little blah, but the drama caught up to her late in the game. She’s not invested in this one way or the other, but found the whole of it to be rather stressful. It was good baseball drama. I guess he was doing the math, but at some point my father-in-law said he’d been a Yankees fan for mumble-mumble years. Suffice it to say, his whole life. He was impressed by the number, too. Started telling the ushers about all of those years, all of those ups and downs, all of those pinstripes. The man wept when Thurman Munson was killed, got sentimental at the old timers’ games, and was offended on Yogi Berra’s behalf when he was left off a greatest player’s list. (Ask him about that. He’ll make the case, and he’ll be right.) I should ask him if he remembers a particular reason of how and when and why the fandom caught him.

adventures / bespoke / Instagram / Ireland / Philadelphia / photo / Rowan / sport / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on A unique piece
28
Apr 26

A unique piece

I wanted to add to my small lapel pin collection. I have 15 of them, most of which I’ve just collected over the years. About half of them were given to me. I have little case to display them in, and lapels on which to wear them. And so it seemed a good time to add a few to the rotation. This is tricky, I figured, because they should have some sort of meaning to the wearer. How many meaningful lapel pins can you be autobiographical about?

It turns out you can get custom made lapel pins for pretty cheap. So I made and purchased two of them. They arrived late last week, and I’m slapping one on today.

I like the old logos. And the quality of these is pretty good. So it is probably a good thing that lapel pins ought to mean something, otherwise I might be adding more to a medium-sized and growing collection.

But no one needs that. Least of all me.

Today in Rituals and Traditions I wrapped up the last of our lectures. I shared this video, which is all kinds of great. It has just the right amount of spiteful, prideful, “Make me.” What’s more, FIFA deserves attitude, at the very, very least. It’s a shame they won’t get more.

We also talked about the future of stadium design. No one in my class is in architecture or engineering, so they’ll never do that themselves, but you never know where you’ll wind up working, or what the facility circumstances will be. So today we discussed a recent trend of removing the cheap seats from venues, in favor of more lounges and escalators and clubs and restrooms. The cheap seats are important. They are typically thought of as a gateway into the sport. And we have discussed how fans spend more money inside the stadium — food, souvenirs, etc. — than they do to get in the place. So I asked them to think about how all of these changes might effect the fan experience and stadium choreographies and everything downstream of such changes.

I had a colleague come in to proctor the student evaluation process. I summed up the semester, gave my last little lecture and handed over the room. We’ll get together one last time, Thursday, for their presentations.

In Criticism we talked about this story, Suns’ Devin Booker calls out ref by name in furious NBA playoff rant after baffling call, which allowed us to talk about sources and source credibility. It doesn’t really seem to figure into this particular story, but it is the Post, and it should figure into every bit of their copy.

We also talked about Hailed as a ‘football goddess’ by many, yet sexism, hate and misogyny remain for this soccer trailblazer:

Marie-Louise Eta received a typical German welcome at Union Berlin’s Stadion An der Altern Försterei on Saturday.

“Fußballgöttin!” (“football goddess”) they bellowed in deafening unison.

Eta, 34, was named interim manager of the Bundesliga club last week after the sacking of the under-performing Steffan Baumgart. As a result, her unexpected appointment became a historic milestone as the club smashed through a glass ceiling in men’s professional soccer.

In the April 18 match against Wolfsburg, Eta became the first woman to take charge of a men’s soccer team in any of Europe’s top-five leagues (England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain).

Here, we talked, obviously, about representation. This example also let us consider a great deal about the notion and value of context, for the CNN copy omits a lot.

(Update: She was successful. Union Berlin finished 11th of 18th after going 2-2-1 under Eta’s tenure. She will coach the Union’s women side next year, as planned. Tapping Mauro Lustrinelli to run the men’s team returns the club to the old European boy’s club. Pretty much everyone expected that.)

We also talked again about watching out for fake stories. There’s a set of skills involved in that, and we were due a refresher. So we discussed psychological literacy, basically understanding our own psychological biases so that we might be, hopefully, less at risk of manipulation. We also talked lateral reading (check up on the source you’re reading and read others besides, basically).

It sounds better in the lecture. Maybe it sticks with people.

And for me, two more classes to go for the semester.

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 amazing video is from An Bhinn Bhuí.

adventures / Philadelphia / photo / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on A first, two firsts, three firsts, maybe
11
Feb 26

A first, two firsts, three firsts, maybe

This snow and ice is never going to melt. Mostly because it has nowhere to go. The conditions have not been conducive to condensation, which would hurry the process along. Instead, the air has been cold, unceasingly, and relentlessly dry. Oh, you can see some rooftops now, asphalt shingles darkened by the moisture that has sat on them for almost three weeks now, but that’s just false hope. It’s nothing but this from here on in.

Those hours of sleet we had last month seemed like a lovely thing at the time. We had all the groceries we needed, no travel planned and I’d pulled out every light source and battery we own as a therapeutic just-in-case. We never lost power. You could get out and drive again on the bigger roads on the third and fourth day — if you could get to those bigger roads.

Mostly, it’s just boring. Going outside is nice. Looking out the window and seeing grass and trees and things is nice. Instead, I just stare through curtains and blinds, thinking about the things you can’t do.

It’s never about the things I should be doing, which is weird.

Today I did class prep for tomorrow’s classes.

It occurred to me when I was wrapping that up that this was a unique day of class prep. I always spend at least the day before building or finishing and polishing the next day’s classwork. Today was the first time I have ever not had to build it all out from scratch. Ever? Ever. Two classes tomorrow, and I didn’t have to start all over to get ready. I spent my time reviewing notes from previous lectures that I am going to use tomorrow. First time ever.

The first class I taught was in … what? In 2009?

The really nice thing is that next Monday/Tuesday this will happen again. Twice in a row! But then the streak ends. Still, this is nice, and the way it should be more often. One day it will be, perhaps. We’ll see. We don’t know that, but we’ll see.

I’ve never liked “we’ll see,” but it is an inescapable sentence.

We drove over the river this evening. Parked in a parking deck. Walked a few blocks to where we were going. Shivered part of the way, because I did not carry a coat, because I didn’t realize all of that. But, hey, that’s my fault and no one else’s. Anyway, it was warm where we were going. And they had a restroom and food, and also the evening’s entertainment.

We walked into this little comedy club, which was some slightly larger room behind an empty bar. Probably the joint sat 100, 120 people. Cozy little place. Unless you were sitting right at the back of the room you probably felt like you were sitting right at the stage. It felt both dusty, but clean. And a little shopworn. Three long steps would get you across the stage and the back wall was a faded old cityscape mural.

It made me think, as comedy clubs always do, about how comedians in my hometown would brag about our venue when they played there. The Stardome was one of the best in the country, they’d say. In my very limited experience, they were right! Also, that place has a real menu. This place offered three sandwiches, three pizzas and drinks. They didn’t have a drink minimum, they had an item minimum. Extortionate so-and-sos. But I choose to think that means all of the money from tickets goes to the performers, which is a nice thought.

We saw Kristen Key this evening. She got her break from one of those comedy variety reality show things, but we discovered her on Instagram a few years ago. This was the first time she was in the same city we were in at the same time, and so of course we went. (She was also at the concert last night, and now I think she’s following us.)

Her Instagram feed is full of clips of her Q&A period, but here’s a set piece from another show, which we saw this evening.

And here’s another song.

The questions she got during this show were … not good. Someone was looking for love. Someone else’s relative is a huge fan but couldn’t make it because of a medical procedure. A third person was looking for some sort of dating advice she could share. Someone asked about her favorite song from last night’s Brandi Carlile concert. And someone asked what her favorite Winter Olympic sport is and why is not curling. She said her favorite sport was curling.

She got the standing ovation in the little club at the end, and got a little teary about it. And then she was standing out front to meet people as they left, spending several minutes with anyone that asked, which was nice. She mad a video for the person who couldn’t be there because of health reasons. We talked with her for a moment, and she, of course, told us to come back the next time she’s in town, and we will, especially since I just thought I should ask her to record an outgoing voicemail message for me.

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