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Rowan

We don’t talk only about the weather

Much of the country is under a heat dome, because heat wave just doesn’t focus group well. One of the local broadcast meteorologists here pointed out that we were at seasonal averages, and a change was in the air. I called him many, many names for the implication, but he’s used to that, being a broadcast meteorologist.

I’ve admired those people, worked with some of them, taught some more of them, and I feel for all of them. They make models and they’re sometimes wrong. It happens so much they are common jokes. You’re doing the punchlines right now. They work at all hours. And when the weather is really bad, it’s all hands on deck, and the greats stay on until the weather has moved on. Most stations will send out their reporters on days like that for the cliched stand up, but it’s the meteorologist who has to help find a place their friends and colleagues can get the story, but stay safe. That’s a huge responsibility, to say nothing of the way they all mentally take on that role for their community. But pity the poor meteorologist who sees something on the radar that justifies breaking into the soap operas or the big game.

I try to be understanding and appreciative of meteorologists, especially the really good ones, in most every thing they do on air. If you can name every small county road across the DMA, I’ll talk about you with the reverent tones a legend deserves. There’s just two things you can’t do. One of them is this: you can’t, in the summer, talk about the change of seasons.

Longtime readers will be able to figure out the second thing easily enough.

Anyway, the high today was 82 degrees.

My cycling computer is a Garmin 705, which is now pushing 15 years old. I bought it, used, a few years back, because it did all of the things I wanted at the time and it has basic maps, which could be useful. That could be a very useful feature just now since so many of the roads are new to me.

I tried to get to the maps part of the device a few days ago, mid-ride, but couldn’t remember how. Another day, I figured. I’ll only think of it when I’m well and truly lost. But, he said with confidence, there’s always the map on my phone. Problem with that is, I’d have to hold my phone. And the computer is right there, attached to the headset.

Anyway, something I noticed for the first time a ride or two ago is that while the unit of measure is tenths of a mile, the first tenth of a mile is displayed as feet. It ticks up 10 feet at a time, through the first 520 feet.

So it was that on today’s ride, while I was watching those numbers tick up 280, 290, 300, 310, that I knew right away that my legs didn’t have “it.” So little “it” did my legs have that I chased my lovely bride the whole time. So little “it” that she sat up and waited for me once. So little “it” that I decided to add on more miles to the ride, because I keep saying I need more rides, but I also need more miles. I will get my legs out of this unproductive funk.

So little “it” that I didn’t even take any photos or videos of the whole ride, but I did get a shot of the Garmin during those extra miles.

I’d just passed the grocery store and was about to go through the roundabout, just plodding along.

Somehow, despite having dead legs, I set PRs on two Strava segments. They were on roads I’ve only been on twice, and they only shaved a few seconds off the first ride.

I had a nice long Zoom chat with a new colleague this evening. The goal was to help get me up to speed on a class I’ll be teaching this fall. She was very kind to share the time, and generous with her thoughts and materials. Answered a bunch of questions, helped put me at ease and offered to help me throughout the semester. She invited me to come visit her classes, which was especially considerate.

The class will be even better because of that conversation, and I was grateful for the help.

Also, the chat gave me my first look at how my home office will play as a Zoom background. I’ve got nice evening light and a great depth of field. I just need to fix a few things in the background. But I’ve got ideas about that.

While I was considering those, after the chat, I noticed the last light falling on the door.

It stayed like that just long enough for me to turn around, grab my phone, pull up the camera app and compose a quick shot. Seconds later, the clouds rolled in front of the sun, and, disheartened, the sun slipped behind the trees. The meteorologist was off tonight. A different guy was on, and I couldn’t bear to hear it again. I’ll also pretend not to notice that the time stamp on the photo said 6:27 p.m.

This is the fourth installment in my tracking down the local historical markers. There’s an online database with 115 markers in the county, so we’ll be at this for a good while.

You can find them all under the blog category, We Learn Wednesdays. What will we learn about today?

The first stop is the Friends Cemetery, which is a few blocks up the road from the Friends Meeting House. The marker says …

Three African Americans are interred in this Friends cemetery.
From the records:

“Rachel Mintiss (Colored), wife of Andrew Mintiss was buried 5th mo. 8th 1846 on the hillside, near the 1st Row of the 2nd purchase.

Andrew Mintiss was buried 28th of 8th mo. 18?? on the left of his wife. Aged about 82 years.

Abigail Mintiss, widow of Andrew Mintiss was buried 31st of 1st month 1850 next to her husband.”

Andrew Mintiss and Abigail Atlee were married 16 September 1846. He died between then and late January 1850. The location of these unmarked graves remains unknown.

Find A Grave thinks Andrew Mintiss died somewhere between 1846 and 1852.

Some 2,500 others are buried there, including at least one Civil War veteran, a militia captain. In his portrait, he’s seated, bearded, holding a sheathed sword.

The Bassetts came over on the ship right after the Mayflower, and a few hundred years later, there was Howard. He studied dentistry, but became a farmer. He married Clemence not too long after the war. They had seven children.

The oldest recorded grave was a Quaker who lived and died a British subject. He was interred in 1773. It’s still an active cemetery.

Not too far away is the Russell G. Garrison Memorial Park. It was rededicated as a memorial and environmental park in 2017.

All of those men were locals who died in Vietnam.

One of the town’s busier thoroughfares runs right by the park, but there’s something tranquil about the place despite the road noise. There’s a large rain garden that features hundreds of native plants helping collect storm water and prevent run off. The parking lot has a porous asphalt and the whole place has an underground filtering system to deal with chronic flooding. There are signs explaining all of this, the rain garden and the owl houses.

The mayor says the park is part of a growing greenbelt around the town. I kinda want to see the rain garden in action. I guess I’ll have to pay closer attention to the meteorologist.

photo / Rowan / Tuesday — Comments Off
22
Aug 23

Fraught of feather, talk of talons, enchant of eyes

The mascot at Rowan is The Prof. He comes to life in the form of an owl named Whoo RU … because owls say “Who” and RU are the initials. Imagined in 1957, brought to life in 1959, and not made official until the 1990s — the idea of an underground mascot encouraging and antagonizing people for almost 30 years is hilarious — he is, like all costumed mascots, as dynamic or mediocre as the people involved with the project make him. But this, the first line about the mascot from the athletic department’s page, seems like a missed opportunity.

The Rowan University “Professorial Owl” has been a misunderstood yet deeply dynamic figure for 50 years. Not only does Rowan’s Prof promote the sports teams, but he has also, over the years, become a proud endorser of the student publications, campus events and all-around Rowan pride.

The biggest question from people, linked academically to Rowan or not, would have to be “What is a Prof?”

I’m not sure who named the character, or when, but I assume they were big fans of The Who.

(I really wanna know.)

Anyway, I decided today, on day two of orientation, that I would ask some big questions about this. Whoo RU, where are you?

That one was on a little handbill with useful contact information we received in one of the many sessions. This version was on, well, you can tell what he was on.

Whoo RU, where are you?

What’s going to happen a lot is that we’ll see a bunch of different owl logos meant to be evocative of Whoo RU, but only specific instances of the actual character because he’s limited to athletics. There are reasons for that, but I wonder if it diffuses, or reinforces, the brand in the long run.

Do you see a lot of alternate versions of Georgia’s Hairy Dawg or Florida’s Albert, or Puddles, the duck at Oregon? I don’t think so, but I could be wrong. Maybe you see them, but the costumed mascots are so iconic that your brain makes the leap without thinking about it. Call it “The mental shortcuts of things that don’t matter overmuch, not really.”

So I guess the question is, does the mascot have to be iconic to overcome that? Or is it enough that a mascot that is locally iconic? Or can a mascot that’s long been deeply misunderstood do it, too?

For what it’s worth, having not met Whoo RU yet, the cartoon owl holding a stack of books is pretty great. Is that meant to be Whoo RU, or an owl cousin with a backstory we just aren’t supposed to question? Whooever — see what I did there? –that library-going owl is, he looks ready to be the lead in a classic kids book.

Anyway, more orienting today. Full of truths, allusions to truths, helpful information and stuff that blows right by you. The thing is, if you gather a group of 50-some incredibly well trained people in disciplines representing all different disciplines that a college campus can offer, and those people are also at different stages in their careers, you’re going to find that they need different information. It’s a difficult event to program, but the programmers did a pretty nice job with it.

I didn’t have a welcome packet for some reason yesterday. The lady who does this sort of thing was a bit upset, concerned that I would be upset. I was deeply, passionately moved by this first impression. And I let her have it.

I said, “This is not my first impression, but I really must tell you, this leaves an impression. And the impression that it leaves is, I am not … ”

I didn’t say any of that, of course. It’s an easy oversight. There are a lot of moving parts. You don’t know how much goes into programming a three-day event that involves seven rooms in three-to-five buildings a day across a campus, involving dozens of people who watch their schedules like ~~a hawk~~ an owl, to say nothing of the catering and technology until you’ve done something remotely similar.

Several times, because it happens in medium-sized group dynamics, I ran into this nice lady. Each time she was apologetic. Finally, I made a joke that it was OK; I don’t need a name tag because I am working undercover.

She came up to me at lunch today with my gift bag and name tag. Inside the bag — a quality reusable bag which will haul groceries for me soon — was a water bottle, a folder with the schedule of events, a pen and a cool lapel pin. The name tag was blank. This, I thought, was a terrific joke in reply. I wore it with pride, that blank name tag.

Another good day, a long day. But the people were nice, the catered food was perfectly passable and the sessions were useful.

It brings the start of the fall semester another day closer, but this is the thing I’ve learned: I need more sleep. So, seeing that it is late, I’m going to give that a try.

adventures / books / cycling / Monday / photo / Rowan / swimming / video — Comments Off
21
Aug 23

I suddenly feel semi-oriented

In late May, I bought a new backpack. It arrived in a timely fashion, and I stowed it away in my office. Of course, as planned, not too long after that I didn’t need to use a backpack. But I needed a new backpack. The shoulder straps were growing threadbare. The little handle at the top, the one you use to pick the bag up if it is on the floor, was all busted up. A zipper on one small compartment was broken beyond repair. Most distressingly, the bottom of the main compartment has two growing holes.

Friction. Rubbing my belt. Riding my bike to work. Dragging it on the ground. Whatever it was, my laptop and the other items carried in there would soon be at risk. It was time.

But it was a good bag. Carried all of my things. Spacious. Plenty of pockets. Lasted years and years. I don’t remember exactly when I bought it, but I remember where and the circumstances. Call it 2013 or 2014. Anyway, it worked well for a long time for a bag I tend to carry most every day. So I got my money’s worth from the cheapest bag I could find at a small office store, the bag that I thought, at the time, was too expensive.

So I bought the same bag again.

Why reinvent the method of moving my things? Why lay out a new way of lugging things? Why set up a new system? Why establish a new packing paradigm?

Last night, I emptied the old bag, and put all of my things into their same spot in the new bag. My computer and two small notebooks in the main computer. A camera stick, some tabletop tripods and a microphone in the secondary pocket. A bottle of Advil and two handkerchiefs in a side pocket. Two ponchos and two garbage bags — for emergency poncho or any other number of uses — inside the other side pocket. A small assortment of Post-it notes, multicolored, a few pens and sharpies, a thin container of bandages. Two umbrellas, four masks and a thumb drive or two. All of it where it belonged, in the same spots, in the new bag.

I discovered three additional smaller pockets inside a medium pocket on the old bag while doing this.

This morning, I hefted the new bag on my shoulder for the first time. The straps are stiff and new. And, somehow, it feels heavier, even without a few extra pieces in it I didn’t need today. Probably, I’m out of practice: I have carried a great many heavy things recently, but I haven’t put a backpack on my shoulders since mid-June.

Today, though, we went to Rowan. First day of new faculty orientation. Three days of this. Some of it is very helpful. Some is aimed at new faculty and, hopefully, those people are getting a lot out of those elements. Everyone is excited and happy, it seems. Attitude is important. Passion is important. Students and the work are important. But so is your well-being. This was, largely, the theme the president, Dr. Ali Houshmand offered in his welcome address at the brunch this morning.

And so everyone there was happy. Enthusiastic. Deans from different parts of the campus complimented the programs in drastically different part of the campus. Most everyone that spoke made a special effort to point out how long they’ve been at Rowan, and how it’s still a wonderful experience. That’s great. Very encouraging. I hope that’s the case for everyone, and not something they were asked to say. Even a Q&A session, the sort which could easily turn into a grouse fest was particularly upbeat. Very encouraging.

At the end of the day there was a little outdoor mixer. We talked with our dean. I chatted with an associate dean, a fellow who came over to administration from political science. He said that, I glanced at my lovely bride and she smiled, because she knew that was a good 15, 20 minutes of conversation taken care of. And so it was! He talked about his previous research, the structure of American-style politics. I asked him if he missed that sort of work since he’d gone over to administration. Then I asked him about the new paper on Article 3 of the 14th amendment. He said he hasn’t read the paper yet, but he knew of it, and he had some thoughts. Everyone has thoughts about that paper.

My little name tag, meanwhile, of course says “journalism,” but there I was, talking poli sci. Then I remembered what was on my name tag, so I asked him some broader and philosophical questions. It was a fun conversation.

The mixer was winding down, so we went over to say goodbye to our dean. We ran into Houshmand, the president. And the three of us talked for about 20 minutes. He easily shows off his keen, innovative ways of thinking about higher education, and his passion for the place and the task at hand. It was a delightful chat. It felt, almost, like getting permission to do something you weren’t expecting.

It was the longest conversation I’ve had with a university president in all my years, on any campus. I hope we have the opportunity to have several more.

But enough about me, let’s get to why you’re really here, the site’s most popular weekly feature, checking in on the cats. Phoebe, it seems, has rediscovered this little buffet table. She presently seems intent on making the surface, the floor below it and the airspace around it, strictly hers.

Poseidon was a very good boy much of the weekend. Which is not a thing we can say a lot. He was also quite cuddly this weekend. These two things often coincide. But he just looked, last night, like he was planning his next mischief.

And the good traits, of course, were not to last. He’s been a jerk all evening to his sister.

Probably that’s why she’s staking out that table top.

I had a big bike ride on Saturday. My lovely bride had a longer ride scheduled, and those are (usually) my favorite ones. We have, on our last two rides, added some new roads, which is wonderful, because there are so many new roads for us to explore. Saturday’s adventure involved a road we’ve been on a few times, some others we’ve been on just once, and the back half of the usual, easy hour route.

It was a big ride in the momentous sense. We were only out for about two hours, but on the back end of the ride, indeed, right in that area of the last shot in the above video, I broke my record for the most miles pedaled in a single year.

It’s a humble record, comparatively so, but it’s a new high for me. And the best part is I did that in August — even if I am behind on my spreadsheet’s projections — there’s a lot of time to build the new PR.

Yes, I have a spreadsheet for this. It’s one of the only spreadsheets I like, because it is simple, but also because the numbers only go up.

We also spent Sunday afternoon outdoors.

I swam a mile. Well, I actually swam 1,700, but I discovered that Strava gives you a little message “Congratulations, this activity is your longest swim on Strava!” when you set a new mark.

I also discovered I like seeing that message. Generally, internet badges don’t mean much to me because they don’t mean anything, but seeing that little box is a nice bit of encouragement. I’ve had longer swims, but they were long before I began using Strava. And since I am not training for anything in particular right now, and my swim is my own, and because I like that note, I might just increase every swim in small increments, just so I can get that message a lot.

This might be why I’m not terribly efficient in a gym, pool or anywhere else where new standards can be set.

As for the swim itself, it was rather spontaneous on my part. Seemed like a good idea. My shoulders disagreed for 100 yards or so, but after I ignored them for a while, they gave in and performed slightly more efficiently for a while, and the laps clicked away easily. It was a nice feeling.

I also sat in the shade and read the first third of Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings (1984). Welty is from Jackson, Mississippi, is revered as an incredible talent, a giant of her generation, and, for reasons that I don’t recall, I’ve never read the first bit of work, probably just because I don’t read much fiction, and the loss has been entirely mine. Here she’s examining the differences between her and her brothers. They were the in their laughter, but their anger is where their differences came up.

This book emerged from three lectures she delivered at Harvard, and were eventually turned into this memoir. The three sections are titled “Listening,” “Learning to See,” and “Finding a Voice.” All of it is self-possessed, none of it all consuming. She’s painting a triptych, I think, showing her surroundings in this delicate, sweetly innocent way, filling in her surroundings to show what makes the great author.

It’s all eminently relatable.

It has to stay in the house. Can’t go in the new backpack; I might be tempted to reach for it in between meetings.

music / Rowan / Thursday / video — Comments Off
20
Jul 23

More music to my ears

Started the day with some good ol’ fashioned house cleaning. My lovely bride’s mother is coming for a visit and we have to hide more boxes and clean the floors and give another big push toward making this look more like a home than an abandoned warehouse. More a place that looks like people could live in it rather than a low-budget dystopian landscape.

I kid, of course. We’re basically there. Because we’ll have company the guest bedroom is coming online. After that we’ll only have the dining room to go.

The last time we moved my mother-in-law came to visit at precisely the right time, injecting some much needed momentum into our efforts and helped us unpack the dining room. I reminded her of that recently, not to suggest she should do it again, I said, but to point out how important that was to pulling us across the finish line … and are you sure you aren’t interested in doing that again?

She doesn’t have to do that again.

We had a technician come in and pick up some testing equipment they’d left earlier this week. We passed the test. All systems go. The good news there is that all of the things I’ve put on the back burner because of this can now be placed back on the front burner. Ehh, Monday, maybe.

I made a trip to the Rowan campus today. Had to take care of a little paperwork. Stopped in to meet the dean. We talked for more than two hours. I don’t know how many one-on-one chats I’d had to add together with my previous deans to total two hours, but that math problem would span several deans, for sure.

We talked about the area. We talked dialects. We talked about the move, and the mysterious light switch in our hallway. He told me about the 100-year-old house his family moved into when they first came here in the 1990s.

We discussed the Edelman College classes I might like to teach in the future. I’d sent him a list of classes in the catalog that I can credibly lead, and he detailed where each of those is going in the future. And, it seems, there will be plenty of options to set up a fun little corner of coursework. It is a ball-is-in-your-court kind of conversation, a conversation that will run into next spring and beyond; it is a conversation I’ve never been offered before. Hopefully good things will come from it, and so now I’m coming up with ideas for classes and curricula.

Then the dean pulled out a piece of paper that showed a map of one of the college’s buildings. These are the offices for this unit. This is a classroom for this. That’s the newspaper. Over here is the TV studio. And this room here is going to be a new kind of lab. He described it to me, and in the process of explaining the vision they have for that lab he mentioned the idea of creating a working community newsroom. A hyperlocal project that is both classroom and practical. Now we’re talking about journalism, news deserts, coverage areas, the possibilities and concerns, the successes and liabilities of a newsroom of this sort. And this is part of why the conversation went on for more than two hours. Then the dean mentioned some other specific needs he sees for underserved communities. If anything comes from that, it would be an important contribution. That he sees, at least conceptually, the need, is a big, positive signal.

Then I chatted with the dean and the associate dean about the 3+1 model the Edelman College has helped pioneer for the university. If you want to enroll, but aren’t near the main campus, or your circumstances don’t allow you to come in as a traditional student, they’ve created a partnership with community colleges. It creates convenient, and affordable opportunities, to further a person’s education. It was nice to see their enthusiasm for the program, and great to hear. Innovation with rigor is the sort of thing a university can do well.

By the time I got back to the house it was after 5 p.m., and my mother-in-law had already taken the big house tour. Now we’ll do a little visiting, so, to play us out …

We saw Barenaked Ladies just last night in Philadelphia, remember. Here’s some more of the show.

“Hello City,” is from the “Gordon” album, and it is one of those songs with some bitter-tasting lyrics disguised by tempo and instrumentation.

It’s happy hour again.

And “Brian Wilson,” of course, is about the Beach Boy, ~~Al Jardine~~ Brian Wilson.

Oddly enough, Brian Wilson actually covered the song. It’s as surreal as it should be.

Maybe Jardine has as well? I dunno. Let’s look tomorrow.

That’s enough for now. We’ll get a couple more days out of the BNL show, so if you’re waiting for a favorite, come back tomorrow. You may see it here. See you tomorrow.