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cycling / Monday / photo / Rowan / site — Comments Off
2
Mar 26

The month of lions and lambs

Happy Monday, and happy March! We have survived the brutal months. Now, the month that makes the difference. All of the snow has mostly melted. Spring, overdue, has been promised. It has not yet been received here. It will be received with great interest when it shows up. And we’re getting close. We’ve had some mild temperatures. We’ve had sunny days, like this weekend. Now we just need to put it all together … and we will … and then keep it that way, until late November or so.

I better not be writing paragraphs like that very much longer.

It was a productive weekend, all spent right here at my desk. I did the monthly cleaning of the computer, updated the monthly spreadsheets, created new subdirectories and updated some boilerplate code. I put the February page of my master assignment calendar behind me. (I have several task-specific calendars running and when the stress of things hits my move is to make another calendar. Late last month I made the master panic calendar, filled it out through May, noticed almost every moment between then and March 28th was spoken for and then set about marking things off the list. Nowhere on that calendar is there a note to make another calendar. Five is sufficiently silly.)

I settled on two new documentaries for class. One of them will be a midterm, and I finished writing that today. The other we’ll watch in class. I’ve had it on my radar for some time, wanted to watch it, want to write something about it. About 14 minutes in I knew it was going into my Criticism class, too. I’ll pretend like this was all by design, because it should fit perfectly.

Also, I finished the draft of that work packet. Presently the thing clocks in at 29 pages, with all of the appendices to go. I wrote the service and research and professional development sections last week. I detailed the teaching section, filling up the maximum seven pages. I have two years of classes, peer observation, student reviews and subtle notes about the future to get into just seven pages. It took some doing to make it fit. Happily, all of the scores from my teaching evaluations are good. The lowest score I’ve registered in the last two years was about the difficulty of a class. Message received: that class will be more demanding and challenging if I get to offer it again.

I’m taking today off from that packet. It’s time for a break from thinking about myself. Besides, I have to think about tomorrow’s classes. Tomorrow evening I’ll do a dead tree edit of the packet, and then send it to a colleague who has generously offered to make sure I’m not omitting anything. After that, final corrections, final assembly, PDF the thing, and send it in. All of which takes place by mid-March. Not the longest thing I’ve ever written. Not the most tedious thing I’ve ever written. But it is a lot of me. Call it … maybe 60 or so pages? I can’t say yet. The checklist, though, tells me I have to have TWO tables of content. That’s always a signal.

On to more important things. We need to do the weekly check=in on the kitties. Phoebe would like you to know that she is not on the table. She is on the runner. And nowhere in the contract does it say she can’t be on the table runner.

Poseidon, himself no slouch when it comes to jailhouse cat lawyering, finds the argument a bit tiresome. Though you can be comfortably certain he’ll be doing much the same thing tomorrow.

So the cats are doing great. Lots of cuddles and big purrs over the weekend. Everyone is doing great.

I did manage a few quick rides. On Saturday, I was in Switzerland! This is just to the northeast of Zurich. I rode up and out from the small rural, forested village of Mosnang and over to the equally small and wonderfully charming Kollbrun. This route was part of one stage of the Tour De Suisse in 2024 and, while I did not see that particular race, I can see why.

I only wish that the person who recorded that route had done so on a brighter day. Switzerland is stunning most everywhere you look. Beautiful lakes, mountains a plenty, gorgeous values, and a huge array of glorious architecture. You can see ancient Roman, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Neoclassical, Art Nouveau. But there’s just a little too much Modern and Post Modern architecture, some of which is bordering on Brutalist. Much better to be among the trees and the hills and the rivers and streams. Even if it’s just my basement.

Anyway, here’s that route.

And this evening I rode in Corsica. (But still my basement.)

The last four rides have felt really nice on the trainer. This is notable because everything prior to that, since November, has felt bad or worse. I was getting demoralized. Now, though, I want to see what kind of trouble I can get into riding uphill on Rouvy. I did that tonight. I found myself a little Cat-2 climb that let me climb 1,110+ feet over 3.82 miles. Saying I rode in Switzerland on Saturday, and tonight in both Corsica or Mallorca, where I powered up that hill, is nice, but I’d also like to go outside. I’m ready to not be in the basement.

If for nothing else because I’m kicking myself by how little I’ve done down there this winter.

But spring is coming in now. That’s what the top of this post told me, anyway.

Rowan / sports / Thursday / video — Comments Off
26
Feb 26

Videos we watched in class

In Rituals and Traditions we discussed the notion of traditions as spectacle. We started with the basic definitions, the unusual, the notable, the entertaining, the exciting public event that is visually striking. All of those things that go into making a gameday atmosphere. I love that stuff. I want to know how they all started, and how they came to pass. And some of these we can get to pretty easily.

For instance, when we talked about aural expressions, I showed this video, and part of the origin story is tacked on to the end.

We discussed other chants and cheers. And the silent expressions. I thought about just showing raw footage of Taylor University’s silent night, but this TV package explains the whole thing.

We discussed visual displays, and I showed this video, while I also confessed that dotting the i does nothing for me. But if it was like this every week, it’d be one of my favorite traditions. Dotting the i is 90 years old this year, and it’s thought to be one of the first big marching band arrangements, and certainly one of the longest lasting.

And, since I’d poked fun at the Aggies on Tuesday, I gave them a little video redemption today, sharing part of this package on midnight yell practice. All of which, as I explained, stems from there not being anything else to do at College Station.

And we talked about stadium performances, like this new thing that Clemson is doing. It’s great! I know, in my part of the world Clemson and great don’t often go together, but this is great, which the game announcers conveniently explained for us.

I talked more about Osceola and Renegade than perhaps they wanted to know, but this is a fascinating piece of lore.

Just to change it up, I touched on the La Barra Brava at DC United. No one knew what barra brava meant, but we talked about Bolivian immigrants coming to that region and attaching themselves to the club in the 1990s and now it’s impossible to think about a game there without them, even as what they’re doing isn’t routinely expected at U.S.A. sporting events.

And then I shared an example of one of the few instances of tifo in the U.S.

There are a lot of compelling examples in soccer, mostly from Europe, where these fans have tied the game and the club to their community, where it feels far more intensely wrapped into identity in a way that we don’t often see here, but you can’t everything in in one day.

And now, next week, they all have to share examples of rituals and traditions they’ve found, in brief individual presentations. We should get two dozen new examples out of the exercise. Or at least I hope we do.

During office hours, since no one came to visit, I knocked off some work, and then I started writing a column. I had this idea the other day and it has been bouncing around in my head long enough that I had to start whipping it into shape. I didn’t finish the job, but this evening I’ve made the thing much better. We’ll see, tomorrow, if I can perhaps try to make something of it.

We watched these videos in Criticism today. This was a long-form ESPN package that ESPN wrote, which followed up on a newspaper article we discussed in class on Tuesday. This woman is just incredible.

We also watched this one, and I think I’m retiring the video. I like it better than two consecutive classes. And I don’t think they’re as impressed with what’s going on in this production, or my explanation of it, than perhaps they should. But the man at the end is a hit.

And then there was this video, which two or three of them had seen, but more were interested in. Many excellent questions were raised. They couldn’t answer them all themselves, but right now I’m pleased to see them thinking their way into the questions.

It occurred to me, watching this once again before the class met, that this particular game was perhaps the first time a where-were-you-when moment took place that everyone had phones in their pocket. They didn’t make that specific point in the piece, but they walk you right up to it.

That’s enough for now. I have a meeting in the morning for which I must prepare. And more things to grade. And other items to work on, too. Keeps me out of trouble.

adventures / cycling / photo / Rowan / sports / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
24
Feb 26

We can at least agree that the Aggie War Hymn is an ear worm

I had the weirdest dream this morning. But no one cares about your dreams. If you’re writing a blog, or someplace that’s not your own dream journal, or the Journal of Altered Conscious Mental, Emotional, and Sensory Experiences, no one will. This should be a lesson to you. Don’t write it out for others, because no one is reading about your dreams (and Freud isn’t coming along to analyze you in the comments.)

Simply do this instead. Point out you had a dream or dreams. This signals that you have not only slept recently, but done so to the extent that you could enter REM sleep. And then, share that you, too, are dismissive of the dreams, that you know that no one cares. And then, by definition, you are hip.

Not only are you hip, but you, my friend, are a dreamer.

And this is the sort of thing I normally charge $84.95 for down at the airport Ramada, where the lonely, bored, and vaguely motivated will fall all over themselves to see my latest slide decks.

No one cares about your slide decks. All the above? You can apply that to your presentations, too. Oh, sure, you put in a lot of work and they’re interesting, noteworthy, sometimes even compelling. But, and this is the key, they are those things in the moment, not in the re-telling.

Pick your spots.

No one cares about your spots.

Except for infectious disease specialists. Tell them everything. Do not charge them Ramada rates.

Here’s the view from the 6th floor almost-corner office. Not bad out there. Most of the streets on the way in were in great shape. Just one, screen by trees and hills and houses, looked a bit rough. At least for our commute. Quite a few people didn’t make it in today. Not everyone has the same snow experience. You can also see that, below, just by carefully observing which people have shoveled their sidewalks 48-plus hours after the snow stopped and who hasn’t.

In my Rituals and Traditions class today I tried to frame things so that we start thinking of these things more like a team, a league or a school, and not like a fan. I presented them with some research on rituals from a marketing perspective. (Rituals have staying power and create conditions where highly identified fans want to come back, take part, and come back again. Also, most of them spend more money on other stuff at the venue than the ticket price itself.) The lecture got us through about a decade of marketing of fandom research and a few more years on sports fan sociology. Also, I showed them the Aggie War Hymn at weddings, with which I made a point about things in, and out, of context.

And then I explained the song. It’s a song about hating your rivals. I explained the history of the song. J.V. “Pinky” Wilson wrote the song in a trench in France during World War I. He came home to College Station, finished his degree, and sang the song in a quarter. Some of the A&M yell leaders heard it, and convinced him to enter it into a campus song contest. It won, and since 1920 it has been an integral part of Texas A&M fandom. I mean, they sing it at weddings.

At which point I paused, and deadpanned, “White people weddings, man.”

Then I said, there are a lot of these videos on YouTube.

We also considered the shared affiliation of rituals, as in the example of the running of the Gumps. Look at that zeal! And the footspeed!

And then we considered what it means to be a part of 61,000 people singing to your favorite team.

I was also able to cite to them a study that told us some 98 percent of fans engage in sports rituals. Most of them have to do with wearing the team gear and colors, but that study broke out 15 other criteria, and quite a few make the cut for people.

On Thursday, my students’ surveys will be completed. We’re asking questions of our study body. Hopefully some of the information will be help to our class as we try to help find and or develop things our athletic department might work on.

In Criticism, we discussed baseball, beginning with this story about one of the Phillies recent relievers. As a young man he caused a terrible car accident that killed one man, badly injured a teenager and almost derailed his own life. But then one of the truly selfless and remarkable things about humanity happens. It’s a terrific story.

I asked the group what they would like to know at the end of the story. What’s not here that’d you like to see in a followup. Someone said they’d like to see what happened if the pitcher and the family met. Just you wait for Thursday.

We also talked about a museum piece — meaning copy from the Smithsonian — about Jackie Robinson. It didn’t really fit the bill, but we were able to discuss why, and also story curation and, again, what’s not in this piece. What wasn’t there was what Robinson did after he walked away from baseball, and that’s every bit, or more as important, as his time with the Dodgers.

In the evening, as the day is getting later everything felt sunny and cheery, even if it was cold, and it looks like Hoth.

We’re right at the point where 12 hours of the day is in daylight. Right at the point where it seems we might make it once again. Right at the moment that should have happened two weeks ago, but will take place three or four weeks from now: it’ll finally feel like winter is behind us.

Since it isn’t, I rode in the basement this evening. I’ve been suffering through the little riding I’ve done of late. Everything got out of whack around the holidays and my cardio slipped and nothing has helped and it just felt like a big chore — a big painful chore.

But this brief ride, for the first time in a long while, things finally felt good. I don’t know why it seemed to click back into place, physically or mentally, but it was about time. Also, Spain. And I went up a hill prominent enough that it got its own little graphic in the heads up display.

I’m sure that’s useful for climbers, so that they might time their exertion to perfection. But it does something else for the rest of us.

Anyway, 30-some minutes over a lumpy area of Tossa de Mar, with two little Cat 5 climbs according to the profile, way off in the northeast of Spain. I hope I get a few more rides in a row that feel as decent as this one.

There’s a lot of riding to do.

And a lot of work to do. So … back at it.

photo / Rowan / Thursday / video — Comments Off
19
Feb 26

Working on my own media aesthetic, it turns out

I bought some new lights. I wanted to backlight some books. The lights arrived Monday, hurled onto the porch from the delivery man’s truck-mounted trebuchet, for he feared my ice labyrinth (a yard of ice and snow, and a driveway still buried until yesterday.

Last night, I finally had a chance to open them. Two small LED lamps connected to one power cable. Lots of pretty colors. Looked great on the promotional website. The video and the inexpensive price sold me.

I opened the box, found the two lights and four different mounts. I also found this booklet.

And, look, light booklet copywriter, I’m glad you have that job. Those gigs aren’t easy to come by, but you should be proud of the work you did throughout. This is important, though: we’re not going on a journey. You’re going to backlight some books.

I spent some time sliding them between the bookcase that holds the Gloms and the wall. It didn’t work quite the way I wanted to. But the lights are fun. You can run them from an app, use standard schemes or develop your own, set a timer, and so on. They’re just the wrong size. But I’ve also got colorful corner laps, slender little things that stand 58 inches tall. So I took apart the frames, slid those behind the Gloms and, ya know, it mostly works. The new lights are now going behind other books. (I have a lot of books, I wonder if I need more lights.) And the look now mostly works! So I have one large bookshelf backlit. I have the top of another backlit. And my old 1930s radio is backlit.

The idea is to make it all the backdrop for video meetings. But as I tinker with the light settings and the exact locations, this could be the beginning of a nice evening setup.

I had an epiphany about the snow today.

I’m going to miss it. We have a sandy soil, but this is just a wet, spongy ground right now. And the grass is, well, brown, as you’d expect.

I found a bowl of candy at the office today. I wonder how long that’ll last. I have two colleagues that have a playful feud about peanut M&Ms and when I saw this, I thought of those guys. One of them is wrong. Peanut M&Ms are just fine. I enjoyed the peanut butter ones today.

It was a nice treat before class. In Rituals and Traditions, we broke the class into groups again. They’ve got group work to do and so group work we began. The group work is now picking up speed. I’m excited to see what they do.

I was also excited to screen this documentary in my Criticism class. I asked them all to jot down the name and impressions they had of all of the people we meet. There’s about eight of them in here.

Then we talked about all of those people. The documentary is about video game addiction. I selected this one because it is a bit shorter, but also because we could do this exercise. We could discuss the different points of view — the guy trying to overcome his problem and help others, his mother, two psychologists, a Facebook executive and a few others — and consider all of the ways that each are talking about the issue.

This could be a media effects conversation, and I pointed that out. We considered the different ways the people came about their ideas in a field of important research that is really only just getting underway. Finally, it is a study in expertise, source credibility, perspective, and authoritative voice.

I was pleased with that. And I was sure to sum it up in the right tone of voice so it sounded, you know, authoritative.

I should have set up some dramatic lighting for precisely that moment in the classroom, too. Maybe next time.

photo / Rowan / Wednesday — Comments Off
18
Feb 26

There’s always new material

When I write these, I work on the photo or video, and then I type away for awhile. After I type type type, sometimes I proofread them. (I … know!) And after I do all of the typing, I punch in all the little categories and then, finally, I write something as a headline. This, I think, is why the headlines are usually bad, and sometimes nonsensical. By then, I just need to get on to whatever the next thing is.

So let me explain yesterday’s title.

Working with new material, and old snow

Thursday of last week and yesterday were the first two days that I didn’t have to design a class meeting from the ground up. Oh, there are always a few things to update or add. That’s to be expected, and I did that last Wednesday and Thursday and on Monday. But what I usually find myself doing on the days before a class is building lecture notes, reading material, creating slide decks and also grading and whatever else. And by usually, I mean always. And by always I mean every time.

I’ve been running classes here for three years. In that time, I have had 14 classes. That’s pretty standard. Of those, 10 have been new preps. That’s not standard. What it is is a lot. New preps are time intensive. Three of those are classes I’ve designed from the ground up — even more time intensive. There’s a lot of thought, efforts, wrong trails, reading, course corrections, reading other stuff and so on that go in each new unit of each new class you’re developing. It’s easier when the material is there, like in some of those instances when I’ve taken over someone else’s class. Then you sink your time into that. But its easiest when you’re teaching something you’ve already taught. Then, you know it. Last Thursday, and yesterday, were the first days in all of my time here (and I’m being kind, because I could stretch this back to classes I taught in the teens) where I wasn’t in a perpetual start over mode.

It wasn’t all brand new because while I spent two days talking about fan identity and the various theories involved in my Rituals and Traditions class, I have used those in another class, and I only needed to refresh my thoughts. And last Thursday in Criticism I showed a documentary, and we discussed it then and yesterday, and I only needed to pull out my notes to make sure that I got in the key points. And then the class discussed the regular two stories, which is new, but just requires a few readings. My online class, meanwhile, I’ve taught a few times before. All the lectures are prepared, and mostly I deliver messages, keep things moving, keep people on track and, as in every class, do the grading.

This is hardly a complaint, simply an observation. Everyone sees the same thing. Maybe one day we’ll get it resolved such that I am in my own lane, carving out my own niche, and so on. That was the original idea, which has not yet been fleshed out to a plan. Maybe, though, we’re getting closer to addressing that.

Interestingly (not really), all of my classes next fall will be classes I’ve taught before. Which will be good! I’m ready for a little mental break. Just a little one. Recharge the batteries, read different new things, dream up new ideas, all of that. Of course, one of the classes I’m teaching in the fall is the online class, with which I am well acquainted. But that class will be taught in person. So I have to figure that out. And my other two classes will be converted from meeting twice a week to once a week.

There’s always new material.

And there’s always the old snow. If this sticks around until the weekend this will have been on the ground for a month. But there’s good news. It’s finally warming up a little. And look what moved in overnight.

Fog equals moisture, and that’s one of the things we’ve been missing these last many weeks. That and reasonable temperatures. Moisture speeds up the melting. It’s the heat brought about by condensation. So all of that fog is a good thing. We are no longer in an arctic desert.

Today I shoveled the sidewalk. That was my work break. I shoveled the sidewalk because we left it alone after the last round of snow three-plus weeks ago. We stood in the driveway, cold and tired and I said “Are you expecting any deliveries?” My lovely bride said she was not. So I said hang it. No one is coming over and this doesn’t need to get done right now. I stand by the decision, but I didn’t realize it’d be 24 days until I did it. Oh, widened the driveway. We helped dig out a neighbor. And I helped another neighbor find her sidewalk again, but my own wasn’t a priority. And then, Monday, a delivery guy did show up, and he just hurled something from a great distance at the door.

Not that I blame him. Who knows how much ice and snow that guy has dealt with, and how many times he’s risked a sprained this or a twisted that in these last several weeks.

Fortunately, the ice is giving a way just a bit, and most of the sidewalk cleaned up easily.

The cats are doing great, and acting much more like themselves. I was pleased to enjoy a great purring cuddle last night. Back to normal. Back to hi-jinx. Back to happy.

And, now, back to class prep.

There’s always new material.