photo « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

photo

I am trying a new thing, a shocking new thing

I’m trying a new thing. That’s unusual. But let me back up. I don’t know anything about this. But let me back up further. Maybe two Christmases ago, I got a gift package from the Butterfly Bakery of Vermont. It was the Guster tie-in, you see. I had received the Gustard the year before, and it was good. I didn’t think I would like it, but it’s great on burgers. The complete gift package includes a hot chocolate, the Gustard, the Fa Fa Fire hot sauce (maple rum chipotle) which I’m working up to trying and Gusternola.

Let’s learn about Gusternola.

We made this warm hug of a granola in collaboration with Ryan Miller, Guster’s lead singer and fellow high functioning weirdo. A portion of all proceeds benefit Zeno Mountain Farm, one of the greatest places on Earth.

Organic gluten free oats*, pure Vermont maple syrup, organic coconut, organic coconut oil, organic pumpkin seeds, brazil nuts, organic quinoa, vanilla, organic brown rice flour, sea salt, organic cinnamon, organic ginger, organic cloves, organic cardamom, organic fennel, organic fenugreek, organic nutmeg. Contains nuts.

A few weeks ago I finally got around to trying it. First off, it’s a 9.6 ounce bag, and the service size is ridiculously small. I got a couple of breakfasts and an odd late dinner out of it.

But the granola was quite tasty.

I was about to order some more from the bakery in Vermont — and I will — but I decided to try some other granola varieties, because Gusternola was my first ever granola.

So, yesterday, I went to the grocery store and stood in the breakfast cereal aisle and studied the offerings. There was a whole section. I got several different kinds. Today, I tried one, which is the first one I picked up.

I tried it first because I picked it up first, and firsties mean something. Also, I figured, it would be most like the Gusternola. And it’s pretty close.

It’s not as good, but pretty close. It’s mass produced, and cheaper. And the ingredients list is close, but there are a few things missing that is in the now high water mark of Gusternola. Plus, it is made somewhere in Oregon. I’m sure Oregon has great granola, but what if Vermont’s granola is just better?

If anything, the syrup here might be a bit too sweet. (This is a big note coming from me.) It is almost acrid. But I have an experiment to try to counteract that for tomorrow.

Anyway, I picked up four different types of granola. This should give us something to dissect for a week or two.

Unrelated, we sure do get some strange looking icicles around here.

We heard one of those fall, during a particularly intense part of a television show — the new and overwrought True Detective — and that didn’t set every human sense to “hyperalert” or anything.

But wait’ll you seem them melt!

This is the 22nd installment of We Learn Wednesdays, where I ride my bike across the county to find the local historical markers. This is the 41st one we’ve seen in this series.

And this place is named after John Fenwick who opened the first English settlement established in this region. He came from money, got married, had three kids, lost his wife, got remarried. He landed here in late 1675. Three days later, on October 8, 1675 Fenwick, a Quaker, recorded a land deed with the local Lenape Indian tribe. He gave his new home the name of New Salem, meaning peace.

It wasn’t always named after him. This place was built as Ford’s Hotel in 1891. In 1919, it was converted to Salem County Memorial Hospital to memorialize WWI soldiers and sailors. The hospital was opened with 30 beds and 12 physicians and surgeons worked there. They treated 1,093 patients in their first year. The hospital was moved in 1951.

In 1989 the building was renovated as the “Fenwick Building.” It’s used now as county government offices. Thirty-five years is a long time after a renovation for local government office space. But it has the all important plaque.

In the next installment of We Learn Wednesday’s, we’ll visit the location of an old jail and market house. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

Before that, though, let’s go back underwater. Here, you’ll find a ray, a puffer, a butterfly fish, a black triggerfish, a beautiful scrawled filefish and much more!

If that isn’t enough, we’ll have more photos from the waters off Cozumel tomorrow.

I haven’t mentioned it, but I have been able to spend a fair amount of time on the bike recently. On the bike, which is on the trainer. Anyway, 80 easy miles in the last three days, which isn’t that much.

Twenty of them were in London yesterday, 43 of them were in a fake world, today, but I did a very real 20 mph pace over the route which, for me, is substantial. Tomorrow, then, is a rest day. After which, I’ll try to achieve another long streak of consecutive days in a row — a humble number I set last November. You will, no doubt, be riveted.

photo / Rowan / SCUBA / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
23
Jan 24

Getting ahead of myself

We are still in winter mode. Though it seems like I’ve been there for a while. It’s more of a feeling than a concession to the calendar. And it’s not a glum feeling. Not a “Gah!” for a change. Rather, it is this feeling that spring is just around the corner. Weekend after next. I blame early commercials for the Master’s and auto racing, the earliest signs of spring. This is, of course, where the trouble kicks in. I think it is almost spring, but we’re nowhere near it.

Back home, they’re still three weeks out, minimum. And this is the real problem. The part of my spirit that thinks about the southland in the springtime knows when that is coming. It knows that, mid-February, a big, impossible, miraculous transition will be upon upon us, that nature’s fanfare is set to provide a paradigm-shifting crescendo early in the act. But only there. Not here.

Being my first winter here, I am also looking forward to my first spring here. I have no idea when that will be. But I found a site that suggested the coldest average historical day of the year is in February. Right about that time it turns to spring back home. So it isn’t a glum feeling today, but give me three weeks.

The thing about the weather is that it sticks around. We still have icicles in the air.

And all of the snow is still on the ground.

It’s supposed to warm up a bit today and tomorrow. This will all start to disappear. It’s only been around for four or five days now.

I had a class on campus this evening. My first in-person class of the semester, which began last Tuesday. It is an evening class, the last class block of the day and, as such, it was the last first class of the term.

I did my song and dance, learned the names of a third of the room and the something interesting about almost everyone. In a few more weeks I’ll have most everyone’s names under control. This semester is going to be my best one yet for matching names and faces.

I showed the class this video, which is always more impressive to me than any class that has ever watched it with me.

I think this was the first time I’ve ever watched that where I didn’t see something new, and I’ve watched that video a lot.

We talked about the class, and that felt rushed. I also gave a 36-slide presentation that covers, roughly, 3,000 years of human communication. So we went from Egypt to Martin Luther — with brief stops in Japan and Ghana — in a hurry. Next week, we’ll discuss the late middle ages and the early modern era of Europe. It’s a class called New Media, and this is the curriculum. We stare at all of human history for two weeks, and for the next month or so we’ll read a bunch of brilliant 20th and 21st century scholars discussing all manner of communication concepts that will get distilled down to television and social media.

I’m looking forward, most of all, to the sidebars. I taught this class last term. Occasionally the conversations ran off the rails. Each time it did, that was the best part of the class that day. I’m curious to see if that will be at the same places as the fall, and if this group of students’ comparisons and explanations will be same as last semester’s comparisons and explanations.

Anyway, if there’s snow outside, there are the warm waters of Mexico on this page. Please enjoy with me a few more photos from our recent trip.

The other day I said I’d never seen a filefish, which may as well be a generic a name as you’ll find on the sandy ocean bottom, that looked quite like this. And then, suddenly, I started seeing them everywhere.

The other fish is the black triggerfish (Melichthys niger). In Cozumel, you’ll bump into them quite a bit, but usually only in ones or twos. They’re beautiful, and they only look black underwater. With proper light they take on a complex color scheme. They can even modify their color somewhat. I don’t know where they fit in the Disney hierarchy of fish and underwater creatures, but they seem like they should be in a stately position to me. Something about those two little stripes.

But then you read about them, how they are aggressive looking for food, how they hunt in packs around Ascension Island. Mob feeding, they call it. How they’re opportunists and relentless, and while that probably hurts them in the saltwater caste system, I admire them even more.

One day on this trip, after our dives were done, I confessed to my lovely bride my unpopular opinion of reef diving. I don’t get agog over lobsters as everyone else does. They just … sit there … waving their antennae at you. Now, those times when you see one crawling along from A to B, that’s interesting, but otherwise, meh.

And so she took it upon herself to make sure that I saw every lobster anyone found for the rest of the week. That’s what dive buddies are for. Here are two of them now.

She’s still my favorite fish, though.

I felt like I saw fewer yellow tube sponges (Aplysina fistularis) than our trip last year. This is purely observational, of course, as I was not taking census survey data. I love these little things, and not because of Spongebob. That color really pops, as you can see, and the formations that the sponges make are sometimes highly ambitious.

The hawkbill turtle is a big yellow tube sponge predator. And that’s probably the cause here. As we’ll see in some other photos later, the turtles living on the Palancar reef are quite impressive.

As are the brown bowl sponges. This one needs some scale, and it didn’t work out that anyone was nearby at the moment. But do you see that fish in the bottom-right corner of the photo? That will at least give us some sort of perspective.

A small person could hide in this sponge. I am sure of it.

And we’ll hide from January with more photos, and a video, tomorrow of course. See you then!

Cozumel / Monday / photo / SCUBA / video — Comments Off
22
Jan 24

Short, but there’s a video and nine photos

We loaded up the car in Connecticut and drove back on Saturday. Luggage, two cats, two cat carriers, and all of their stuff, which we brought up in plastic bins. Poseidon knew what those were about. When the bins appeared, he knew he was ready to travel.

For the entirety of the drive back, they told us about the great time they had at my in-laws. Meow this, meow that.

While we were enjoying our visit in Connecticut, it was snowing here on the inner coastal plain — where the heavy land and the green sands meet. We had six inches or so. When we got off the highway, the surface streets looked like this.

And the neighborhood looked untouched. But it only looked that way, one of our neighbors cleans the road for us. Handy, helpful guy. He makes the roads passable, which is more than the county does.

Had to guess at where the driveway is. And then had to guess where the turn in the driveway is. At least the pear tree helped us find the right hook.

So we shoveled. It was cold. Never got warmer, despite the shoveling. Just stayed cold. We dug out around the new tire tracks, decided the rest will melt by Wednesday, and went inside.

The cats settled themselves in just fine. Phoebe got right back to her observation post.

Poseidon, of course, jumped on everything, immediately.

If the idea of all of that snow is discomforting, let’s go back to Cozumel!

No! Really! Let’s go back. It’s warm there. And you can take your time and enjoy the staghorn coral formations.

Also, they have the The stoplight parrotfish (Sparisoma viride).

And blue sponges!

And juvenile stoplight parrotfish!

And the yellowtail snapper! Which isn’t that rare! You can see it from Massachusetts to Brazil! But see it in Cozumel!

This is brief, because, having spent an afternoon prepping, I have to go to class now. Time to shape minds once more.

adventures / Connecticut / Cozumel / Friday / photo / SCUBA — Comments Off
19
Jan 24

Have another slice

We are spending the day in the Nutmeg state. The cats have been here for several weeks, enjoying extra attention during the holidays while we did extra traveling. We are now also enjoying our time with the in-laws. They took us out for pizza for lunch.

This is the story of apizza.

New Haven is renowned for its pie. We’ve been to a few of the places. Sally’s Apizza, after a long wait and intolerable staff, came out as a disc of charcoal. Pepe’s has become the pie standard. Tomato pies so good you can taste the calories in the air.

Or, as The Yankee’s diving coach said last night, “As you get older, fewer things seem worth standing in line for, including pizza.” It was hard to argue against the point. But, I thought, Pepe’s might be.

Recently, my father-in-law visited Pepe’s and wrote about it on social media. On of our colleagues said, “Yeah, that’s good. But it’s no Zuppardi’s.”

Sometime after that, he went to Zuppardi’s, and found himself agreeing. Found himself raving. Insisting that he take us. Now, the man knows pizza. And so it was that on our next trip, we were to visit Zuppardi’s.

And so here we are.

My father-in-law said it was a pizzeria like the old days. Small booths. Wood paneling on the walls. Unassuming. Just good pie. And he was correct. Because the man knows his pizza.

I don’t know if it is better than Pepe’s, but that made-in-store sausage was exceptional.

Back to being underwater, since I don’t have to worry about post-pizza buoyancy. Here’s my favorite fish, and her rare bubbles.

A coral formation bursting with orange elephant ear sponges.

And this is a beautiful encounter with another of the shy, scrawled filefish.

This one is definitely going on the front page when I update that in the next week or so.

And on this formation, some nice examples of staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis) This is a fast growing coral, perhaps the fastest in the western Atlantic region, making it an important Caribbean coral.

You don’t see as much of it as you once did.

But you will see much more underwater life in this same space next week. Have a great weekend!

adventures / Connecticut / Cozumel / friends / photo / SCUBA / Thursday / video — Comments Off
18
Jan 24

A happy cat reunion

Three weeks or so ago we took the cats with us to The Yankee’s parents. They celebrated the holidays with us there, and stayed on as we continued our many travels. Today, though, was the day that we set out to go pick them up.

We went over the river.

We went through the woods.

And so on.

This visit also allowed us to attend Special Church services, which is a program my lovely mother-in-law runs. We saw friends, we made crafts, we sang songs. I found myself in a thoughtful conversation about the meanings of the word shalom. I’ve always heard that it means peace. But, it turns out, it also means wholeness. So there was this conversation that led me to ponder the idea that maybe they’re not separate meanings, but perhaps they could be, should be, interrelated. Maybe you can’t be whole until you have peace. So I learned something, and sang Beatles songs. It’s a great hour.

And, of course, we got our happy reunion with the kitties. I was sure they would shun us for a while, but they both came around before the night was over. I don’t know why. I kept telling them, they never had it so good as they do in Connecticut. There are people who play with them and pet them and basically let them rule the place. Plus, there are cozy spots and fuzzy blankets everywhere.

They made it clear, pretty quickly, that they hadn’t forgotten us. We got good pets and good purrs.

And then we left them again. Because they never had it so good.

We had dinner with The Yankee’s college diving coach. When she retired as a gymnast she decided to do the springboard for fun. And they’ve kept a lasting friendship with her coach for all the years hence. We had burgers at a little dive where she waited tables in college. You can drive there, or sail your boat up to the back door. A few years ago they worried the place would fall into the river. It’s a place where the floor slants, even after they reinforced everything.

A local band was playing Stevie Wonder and Earth, Wind & Fire tunes. A woman was dancing, by herself, for most of the night. Her gentleman friend danced one song, and we saw why she was dancing alone. (He could not dance.) She wasn’t dancing as well as she thought, but the libations were telling her otherwise. She was just far enough away that the three of us couldn’t decide how old she was. Turns out I was wrong, she was a bit older. And it’s funny how that works. I figured she was a certain age, which just made the whole thing a bit sad. But, as we left, I could finally see she was much older than I thought, which allowed me to think Good for you, lady. Now be sure to call an Uber.

Today’s SCUBA contribution is a couple of quick fish clips from somewhere along the Palancar reef off the coast of Cozumel, Mexico. Beautiful fish here, and all you have to do is hold your breath for 41 seconds.

More photos from under the sea tomorrow. And we’ll enjoy some legendary Connecticut pizza. It’ll be a great Friday.