photo « Kenny Smith | Sometimes compendious |

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We have company, we also have a bike ride, markers, music

My in-laws came in last night, right on time and as expected. We were waiting for them in the garage, to hustle in all of their stuff from the rain. Rained the whole drive, they said. But, other than precipitation, reduced visibility and traffic, it was a good drive. They’ll be spending a few days with us over the holiday, and we’re happy to have the company.

So happy that we spent a little time with them last night before going to bed. And a little time with them this morning and early this afternoon, before going on a bike ride.

We offered for them to go along with us. We have the bikes; we could make it work. But they politely declined.

So we set out for a quick 20. My lovely bride invited me to go longer, if I want to, which I did. I did the first eight miles or so in this nice windbreaker that I’ve had for several years now. It was, if I recall correctly, a present from the in-laws. But, today, I started to think that this technical windbreaker might actually be technically functioning as a parachute. It was a headwind, but still, I could not turn my legs over.

And, too, we were right on the cusp, today, of needing a light jacket, which means that, after some time at flailing about on the bike, it didn’t seem like I needed a jacket. The opposite condition, in fact, seemed to be the case. So I took that off because, by then, I was losing a lot of ground. (Jacket as parachute.) I spent the next 12 miles yo-yoing off The Yankee’s back wheel. But feeling stronger because I wasn’t pedaling against my clothing. So, occasionally, I would take a pull off the front.

So we did one of our usual 21-mile routes. She went back to the house and I continued on. I wanted to do that first leg of the route again, into the headwind, to see if it felt different. (It did.) Also, I wanted to turn around at the other end to ride with the wind at my back. I wanted to see how fast it would push me. (It did.)

Over the course of the ride I set four PRs on Strava segments, all of them with the wind to my back, or in a crosswind. Some of them are impressive compared to the previous bests, but none of them overly impressive compared to the rest of the people on Strava. Some of my splits were actually impressive. And it wasn’t until mile 37 or so, when I was already plotting out the easiest way to get to 40 and get back inside, that I remembered: tomorrow, we have to go run.

So I finished with 41 miles on a cold, damp day, and felt my quads all evening. They’re only just beginning to explain how they’ll complain tomorrow.

This is the 17th installment of We Learn Wednesdays, where I ride my bike across the county to find the local historical markers. Including today’s installment we’ll have seen, I believe, 35 of the 115 markers found in the Historical Marker Database.

And, today, we visit the home of Abigail and Elizabeth Goodwin. They were Quakers, daughters of William Goodwin, a farmer who manumitted all his slaves during the American Revolution. Abigail and Elizabeth were founding members of a local Female Benevolent Society, dedicated to aiding the poor, infirm and elderly.

Historians know more about Abigail (1793-1867) than Elizabeth (1789-1860). More of her letters have survived. Abigail was written about in a book published by one of her contemporaries, a railroad conductor. Also, they had a nephew who wrote about them in his diary, which has also made it into the archives. They lived here. Their home was the first site in the state to be included in the National Park Service’s National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom Program.

This house joined the Underground Railroad in 1838. Here’s a part of one of her letters, writing to William Still:

I have read the President’s proclamation of emancipation, with thankfulness and rejoicing; but upon a little reflection, I did not feel quite satisfied with it; three months seems a long time to be in the power of their angry and cruel masters, who, no doubt, will wreak all their fury and vengeance upon them, killing and abusing them in every way they can – and sell them to Cuba if they can. It makes me sad to think of it. Slavery, I fear, will be a long time in dying, after receiving the fatal stroke. What do abolitionists think of it? and what is thy opinion? I feel quite anxious to know something more about it. The “Daily Press” says, it will end the war and its cause. How can we be thankful enough if it should, and soon too. “Oh, praise and tanks,” what a blessing for our country. I never expected to see the happy day. If thee answers this, thee will please tell me all about it, and what is thought of it by the wise ones; but I ought not to intrude on thy time, thee has so much on thy hands, nor ask thee to write. I shall know in time, if I can be patient to wait.

Still was a businessman, a writer, historian and civil rights activist. His own records show that he helped 800 or more slaves in their quest for freedom. Abigail and Elizabeth had a hand in some of those, as well.

If those walls could talk, their tales would have listeners. Still today, the home of Abigail and Elizabeth Goodwin, a key stop on the eastern route of the Underground Railroad, is a private residence.

Let’s drop in on the Re-Listening project. You’ll recall this is where I’m listening to all of my old CDs in the order in which I acquired them. And, today, we are firmly back in 2004, with “All That We Let In,” the ninth studio album by the Indigo Girls. It climbed to a respectable 35 on the Billboard 200.

Generally well received by critics, this record was their third in a row that settled in the 30s. They’re 19 or 20 years into their career, here, and there’s all of the earnestness and activism that people that knew them came to expect. A lot of reviews point this out, but those are reviewers and, I’d argue, not people who spend a lot of time thinking about any one given band. You just can’t take that part away from this duo, even if you wanted to. It wouldn’t be them if you did. So people noted or complained about that, but

There’s a CD+DVD version of this record, the DVD has six live songs. I think I’ve played it twice. But the CD gets a lot of spins.

I think I bought this without knowing what anything on it would sound like. In my mushy memory, it was nighttime when I put this CD in the player and heard the first notes from track one.

I was already in love with every musical thing Amy Ray did by then, and this record didn’t hurt. Track two was hers.

“Tether” is on this record. And here’s a performance we saw at the mother church, The Ryman, this summer.

One of my favorite songs in the catalog, and this is no easy call, is “Dairy Queen.” It’s the string action, the stuttering percussion, all of the accentuating instrumentation and, oh, I dunno, pretty much every word they wrote down and sang into microphones here.

And then there was “Cordova,” just so starkly beautiful. I knew someone who lived in a small town named Cordova. This was not about her, of course, but it’s easy to put people into songs when you have flimsy excuses like that.

Carol Isaacs is all over this song on the record. She’s playing the piano, the B-3, the penny whistle and, I think, the ocarina.

They brought the energy way up to finish the CD, it’s a full band effort: Isaacs, Clare Kenny, Brady Blade and some other guests, like John Holmes and Joan Osborne, appear on “Rise Up.”

I didn’t see the Indigo Girls in 2004, but we will see them again soon, and we’re excited about that.

And I’m almost as excited about the next installment of the Re-Listening project. We’re going Tex-Mex, and we’ll do that Friday, or Monday. Care to guess who it might be?

music / photo / Re-Listening / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
21
Nov 23

Never good with a carpenter’s square …

It was a rainy day, cold and dreary, but that was just fine. Attention was needed inside, anyway. I busied myself putting some things in the basement and checking on the plants that are under growth lights down there. (Some are doing well.) I moved a few things around upstairs. I cleaned my share of the stuff off of the guest bed. I cleaned the guest bathroom.

All of that and many of the other quotidian chores of the day. It allowed me to ponder the etymology of the word quotidian. (I don’t normally think of etymology, but it’s a fun word.) It comes from French, and old English.

The version we use goes back 700 or so years, “something that returns or is expected every day.” And that sounds about right, for regular ol’ housework.

I also did a lot of grading, because grading needed to be done. Later this week, if I spend another hour on it, I’ll be all caught up. I intended to do that today, but I distracted myself by rearranging the shelves in my office closet.

I used the old step stool. I made this, I believe, in the 7th grade. It was the first or second project we made in shop class. It was the most basic carpentry-by-numbers project. My woodworking skills aren’t especially great today, but they were even less so then. No patience for sanding, had a difficult time cutting anything square, and no patience: the usual strengths one must possess. But, decades later, this is still in good use.

While I was never very good in the shop, my grades were better in the classroom. This, I think, is the only one of my wood shop projects that survived the years. Quite the functional souvenir. I wonder how many of my old classmates still have these step stools somewhere.

A few years ago, I made another stool, a different design, but not much better. It does its primary job, though, giving you couple of feet of extra height. Maybe it’ll work for about the same length of time.

I must return to the Re-Listening project, because I am behind. The Re-Listening project is pretty simple. I am playing all of my old CDs, in the order in which I acquired them, in the car. Then I’m writing about them here, irregularly, it turns out. These aren’t reviews, because who cares? But, it’s another way to pad out the site, I can play and enjoy some music and, occasionally, some memories. I am eight discs behind in terms of writing about them, and I have resolved to listen to a few of those over and over until I catch up here.

So let’s catch up, a bit. We go back to 2003, when I picked up the 2002 Maroon 5 debut. “Songs About Jane” was released in 2002, and it was re-released in October 2003 when it was getting some traction. I have that one, it seems. Five singles were put on the airwaves, and pushed and pushed into radios. The record topped the charts in Australia, France, New Zealand, the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, and reached the top-ten in 17 other countries. It peaked at number six here, selling nearly 2.7 million copies in it’s first year and change. Millions more were moved around the world. It was certified as platinum in 15 countries, and was a multi-platinum debut in eight of those.

Everyone, then, had this record. Let’s talk, then, abut the acoustic EP. It was recorded in New York City in January of 2003, and I have that for some reason, too. It sits right next to the debut in my CD book.

“The Sun” was on the record, but it was not a single. So, if you’re one of the four people who listened to pop music in the oughts who don’t have this record, maybe you don’t know this song.

There’s also a Beatles cover on the EP, which seems an anachronism for this band and time. But it’s pretty good.

Entertainment Weekly called it faceless pop.

From their crisply played but blandly facile songs to a weak-kneed cover of the Beatles’ ”If I Fell,” Maroon 5 cement their reputation as kings of the new faceless pop. Remember when Journey and Styx were derided as generic corporate rock? In retrospect, Steve Perry and Dennis De Young were idiosyncratic oddballs compared with Maroon singer Adam Levine, whose voice sounds more grating than usual without the much-needed studio gloss.

The reviewer might have gotten all of this right, in retrospect.

I remember playing these in Florida, on a 2004 trip. I surely played these discs a lot because, even though I haven’t listened to them in a long, long time, I remembered every key modulation when I played them for the Re-Listening project. But none of those bring to mind big memories. It was probably just a lot of back-and-forth to work music. But that trip to Florida was a fun one.

Tomorrow, we’ll return to the Re-Listening project, and we’ll find ourselves once more in 2004 with two terrific albums.

But, for now, I must return to the Thanksgiving preparations.

cycling / memories / Monday / photo — Comments Off
20
Nov 23

Don’t let this fool you, it was a full, productive, day

I saw a lot of birds on Saturday. They are flying southwest here. So cliché.

It’s like they know something I do not. (There’s a lot I don’t know, so this is likely.) These geese are going a little more to the south, but only by a matter of a few degrees. It probably works out in the wind. One good breeze, one turn of a shoulder and they probably all landed in the same pond at the end of the day.

I once had a philosophical assignment about the dynamics of bird flight. Some of the people in the group were in biology-minded people and approached the question from that direction. Others looked at it more akin to a leadership, inter-personal question. There was also the issue of rotation. No bird stays at the front the whole way, right? Now, I look at the geese in the flying V and think …

That’s a lot of trust.

After Friday’s 27-mile bike ride, I had a quick 15-miler on that bright, beautiful Saturday you saw in the bird photos above. On Sunday afternoon, just before it got dark, I got out for a 21-mile ride. There is, of course, another photo of another barn. But this one also features a shadow selfie.

On my cycling spreadsheet — because of course there’s a spreadsheet for that sort of thing — I this weekend compiled a list of the most prolific bike riding month of each calendar year. Which January had the most miles, what February was the most productive, one March or another I spent more time in the saddle, and so on. So far, six of the months of 2023 are the highest volume. Makes sense: I’ve ridden more this year than any other. And in another ride, perhaps two, November 2023 will make it on that list.

There’s also a list of the best months of riding, in terms of mileage, overall. This month is about to sneak into 12th place. There’s every reason to think this month could become a top five month, overall, if the weather holds. But there will likely be no ride tomorrow, because of the weather. And there was no ride today because of real life.

This morning I had to iron. And also, there was the cleaning up of things. And then this guy arrived. Something we didn’t have the opportunity to do before we moved in, and neglected to do since then.

Talk about your flashbacks. Every so often I get the carpet cleaned, and it’s always like this. I worked at Stanley Steemer … too many decades ago, I am startled to say. It was a decent job in high school. Meet a lot of interesting people, do some useful work. And while the job was the job, no two days were ever the same. And the stories you heard …

When the bright yellow truck shows up, I’m ready to talk shop and haggle. They sent out a solo guy, which was perfect. I just ordered the two-room minimum. He gets commission, and I’d rather the cleaner get that than someone in the office. My conversation went like this.

Do you still get a commission if you upsell me?

“Yes sir.”

Great, upsell me.

“Well — ”

I’m sold.

The prices are a bit high — but what ain’t? — and part of that, I think is so that the guy can cut something off, allowing you to think you’ve struck a good deal. But I did get a good deal, relatively speaking, because I tried to make all of this easier on him. Moved all of the furniture, kept the pets away, stayed out of his way and watched his hoses for him.

He was still relatively new to working solo, I get the impression that it happens more in his shop than it did way back when. He knew what he was doing, and you could tell, or at least I could tell, that he was right on the cusp of becoming incredibly proficient with the whole thing. It isn’t rocket science, of course, but mastering anything to your maximum ability takes time, figuring out the ruthless efficiency of your every move is an art of a sort in a largely repetitive process. And he was close.

We were his fifth job of the day, and he’d worked six days straight. Everyone needs their carpet looking good for the holidays.

We kept the cats in separate bathrooms during all of this. They didn’t seem to be bothered by all of this, which surprises me. Cats can be nervous, and here was a strange dude with all of these noises and smells and … they could not be bothered to care, not really. Damp carpet underfoot was an experience, but they adapted to that quicker than people will. Maybe it’s the two extra sensory inputs.

Anyway, Poseidon, last night, celebrated the beginning of space heater season.

He’s hanging out on furniture and the other floors today, though. Who wants to relax on wet, fresh smelling carpet?

Phoebe, meanwhile, has taken a different approach to the day.

We keep a couple of small boxes for them to sit in. Sometimes a box with an unconventional shape comes through and we’ll let them try that for a time, too, to see if it takes. But, in general, they don’t have big boxes, except for around the move we did this summer. You wonder if that lodges in the cat mind somewhere: this larger shape may have a meaning, I’ll sit on it, to prevent whatever they are thinking.

Sound strategy.

adventures / cycling / Friday / New Jersey / photo — Comments Off
17
Nov 23

Sometimes, you get lucky

We have a well. And all of the well apparatus is located in our basement. I have never had a well before, but both sets of my grandparents had them once upon a time and both of them had the well guts in a little outbuilding and, basically as far as I knew until we looked at our new house, that was how it was done.

In the course of puttering around the basement — it’s a pretty awesome space, and not just because we went without a basement for 13 years — I noticed that there are some stickers affixed to the well guts. Fine, let’s be technical: the machinery. The tank and filter and the piping that connects everything. Hereafter referred to as the well’s guts. On the sticker for both the tank and filter, you can detect a pattern emerging. This one gets serviced every year. That one every two years. And in the fall! So make a mental note of that, and when late October rolled around I called the well people and said, come on out and meet the new neighbors, why don’t ya? Also, give me a well education.

The well guys are booked pretty solid these days, it turns out. Even the manager of the joint seemed impressed by the volume he was dealing with. So it took a while to get them out. And, since we’re talking about it here, you can safely surmise that today was that day.

And not a minute too soon, it turns out.

The guy goes down to the basement with his two crewmates and looks it over. I was not sure, at first, if he was passing a stone or reacting to what he saw. It was the latter. He described the problems he saw, forecast what they would turn in to and then said “I have this on the truck, or you can wait … ” but there’s really no waiting.

Do your thing, well surgeon.

His crew gets to work, quietly, efficiently and solve the problem. Out came the entire old tank.

In went a new tank. At first, there was some worry about the new tank because they couldn’t find the o-rings. (They found them.) I said “I grew up a Challenger kid; I know o-rings are a big deal.”

The head guy misheard me, and asked if I said I worked on the Challenger. (No. I was in the third grade. Also, not a rocket scientist. He doesn’t know the last part, couldn’t know that, but how old does he think I am?) One of his assistants didn’t know what the Challenger was. So I started explaining the space shuttle, all the while thinking Make this short. He doesn’t care. And that’s how I got into a conversation about o-rings.

This was about the time the old tank was brought up from the basement. Here’s the underside.

The guy pointed to some particular points, used some technical terms. Rust was one of them. He said we had a few days, maybe a week or so, before this exploded. And then a flooded basement, aggravation, insurance claims, etc. Sometimes, you get lucky.

I had a lovely 27-mile ride this evening. This afternoon, really, but it goes from light to dark in the blink of an eye. I pedaled over to one of the neighboring towns. We drive through there, but hadn’t ridden to it yet. And it was no big deal. Nice empty roads for the most part. In the town, they were decorating the museum with Christmas lights and going about the beginning of their festivities. They do it up big, for a small place, or so I gather. I’m looking forward to seeing it.

Because I knew time and light were working against me, I took a slightly different and more familiar route back to the house. And, just before I got there, I was rewarded with this view.

I got inside at about 4:38, and this matters. Into the garage. Off come the bike shoes and helmet and jacket. Stop the apps, turn off the taillight, shed my gloves, all of it one smooth practiced sequence. I looked at the time, glanced at the GPS and thought, I can make it.

It being the inconvenience center, which closes at 5 p.m. It’s only about seven miles away and through town and I have to load the car. But if I make it today, I don’t have to do it tomorrow. So I shed the cycling kit and put on an old shirt and shorts and, still sweating, load up the car with the garbage cans and recycling. I drive. The GPS says I’ll get there at 4:57. And what do you know, I got there at 4:57.

The guy that mans the place is serious about time. It’s Friday and he’s got dinner on, I’m sure, but he’d already pulled his pickup down to the gate and was preparing to close it when I pulled in.

Got time for one more quick drop off?

“I close at 5,” he said. He held his out, fingers wide. almost pointing with his palm, making the emphatic point about time.

He let me in, and I understood I was supposed to feel bad about it. There was another guy dropping off his rubbish, too, though, so I stopped pretending to feel bad. But I did hustle. It was 4:57 when I got there. It was 5:01 when I again saw the guy that worked there, waiting to lock up behind me.

Sometimes, you get lucky.

I would like to apologize to him and his wife for making dinner one minute later than necessary. But he was a gentleman and I was grateful for the gesture. It won’t happen again. I hope.

On the drive back, I saw this view, to my left.

The photo is timestamped 5:10 p.m.

Back to the beach! Which is where we were Sunday afternoon! And I’ve been rationing out photos to keep this space busy looking during a busy week! Exclamation point!

While the photos I shared from Cape May yesterday included both an accidental and intentional overexposure, here is a deliberate underexposure. Sometimes you need a dancing silhouette.

Here’s one more shot of the Cape May light house. Built in 1859, automated in 1946 and still in service. It is the third lighthouse to announce this part of the coast. The remnants of the first two are now underwater. Going to the top will cost you a climb of 217 steps, and a small fee. They say you can see 10 miles away on a clear day like this one.

This is all part of a coastal heritage trail route. “A park in the making,” the sign says. You can check out maritime history — fishing villages, light houses, forts and more — coastal habitats, wildlife and historic settlements. It’s a lovely area. And, this time of year, no tourists. We’ll surely go back for another visit soon.

We had a mid-afternoon snack at a local shop, one of the few places that was open on Beach Avenue, the main drag. My favorite New Englander ordered a lobster roll and talked me into a shrimp roll. It was a good choice.

Texas toast, basically, stuffed with shrimp and drizzled with a cocktail sauce. Hard to go wrong.

So we sat there, just over the dune from the shoreline, and had some seafood and counted ourselves lucky for the experience.

Sometimes, you get lucky.

adventures / hot picture-taking dates / photo / Rowan / Thursday — Comments Off
16
Nov 23

This is not a public service, but I did talk about PSAs today

This is how good I have it. I made us late today. So, while I was making us late, my lovely bride was making me lunch.

That might be the sort of approach that gets me moving on time. And it wasn’t that I was late-late. It’s just that there a lot of things to do in the morning and it piled up. Plus, there are the cats. Are they trapped in a closet or a bathroom? Do they have food and water? Can you keep them out of the laundry room, which is basically the airlock to the outside world and, like all laundry rooms, could be a few feet bigger, particularly when you have your arms full of backpacks and things.

We made it on time. I did not have to blame the cats. But I got two homemade PB&Js out of the deal!

Today in class we discussed public service announcements. And I broke up the students into production groups. They’ll be making their own PSAs in the coming weeks. This is a fun assignment and, having given them some time today to start their planning, it sounds like they will treat it in that spirit.

I had the students fill out a survey for their crew positions of choice and, happily, in two classes worth of people, it seems like it will work out that everyone will have a role they are interested in. I’m looking forward to watching them all work their way through the process. And, by the end of the semester, they should all have a nice video and some good experiences they can add to their LinkedIn accounts.

It’ll all be great, because, in the back of the room, this owl is overseeing things.

I choose to see him as a good classroom omen.

Since we talked about a state park yesterday, I wanted to show you this video from that trip. I rode my bike to the park, on the other end of the county, near the end of last month to find two historical markers. It was a splendid day, and the trees were bursting with color. I picked the right day to find this path.

It’s a nice park. Charming views in all of the parts I saw. I’ll have to find my way back down there next year.

We’re still padding things out with a few photos from our Sunday afternoon visit to the beach. And here’s the beach.

This is an old resort town. An 18th century resort town, if you can believe that. One of the oldest in the country, if not the oldest. And it predates the country. You never think about colonials taking beach trips. I wonder how many did.

It was sunny and cool on Sunday when we were there. Right here, in the sun, it felt great. But if you found yourself in some shade you’d want to find yourself back in the sun. It was that kind of lovely day.

I took this photo, without adjusting any of the settings. It’s overexposed, of course, but it’s perfect.

I thought it might be the best one of the day, but before I got around to adjusting the aperture, I took this photo, and it might actually be perfectly perfect.

We’ll wrap up the week tomorrow with four more photos from that trip, plus whatever else comes to pass between now and then.