Rowan « Kenny Smith | Omnes hic sumus discere.

Rowan

adventures / food / photo / Rowan / Thursday — Comments Off
17
Sep 26

Onions, anyone?

I woke up, I read the news. I did some work. I had an early lunch. I got ready to go to work. I sighed at all of the things I need to do. This, I thought to myself today, is where I wrestle this week into control. And also tomorrow. Also, let’s not think about all of the things I should do around the house. It’s that time of the semester already.

And so we hopped in the car.

On campus I had a chat with a colleague around the copy machine. The water cooler is just around the corner, but that seemed a little too on-the-nose. I sent a thank you note to another colleague. I replied to roughly half a dozen student emails. I took care of a small task upon which I was overdue by an egregious 13 hours. I finished my notes for class. Right on time, too. As I scribbled out the outline of the last things I wanted to say today — I use a very small notebook and 75 minutes usually works out to about three pages of outline-stye notes. Today, comparing thoughts to my prepared slide deck, I turned it into four pages and offered a little silent prayer that the class would have a conversation with me.

They did! We sat in that super hot room, which is now baking at about 82 degrees, a remarkable improvement from a few sessions ago when I sweated completely through a sport coat while sitting still.

Today we talked about the social part of our techno-social lives. How the technology influences the culture and vice versa. I successfully resisted the urge to make any Star Trek references. We talked about how technology changes our expectations of things. I stumbled upon a great question … who have you talked to already today that is out-of-state, and how did you communicate with them. People dropped all sorts of states, one student talked to a relative in Jamaica. I had deliberately sent notes to people in a variety of places already this morning, just so I could make my point if they did not. But they did!

They’re becoming a class of talkers and that’s going to make all the difference.

Anyway, the first half hour flew by and then the second half hour did a slow crawl and then accelerated unexpectedly. It’s a 75 minute class and I think we wrapped up at 74 today. Just as I hoped and hoped as I planned.

They have to read a great paper for class next week and I hope a few of them like it. It can inspire great conversations, and in our techno-social lives that’s going to be key. Three students stood around and talked about that with me after class for a few minutes.

Also one student whipped out an iPod on cue, as if she knew where the class was going. She later told me she had a cassette tape Walkman that she’d discovered in her mom’s old things. And that she and her roommate go buy records. People are full of wonderful surprises.

After class I picked up my lovely bride and we drove home. We took part in the relative new ritual of sitting outside to read on Thursday evenings, because we know how to party. At about 6 p.m. she had to go inside for a meeting, and I stayed out for a bit longer to catch up on all of the ink that has been spilled today. This plane flew over head.

I didn’t look it up on the flight tracker app, because sometimes the mystery is better. This plane is on the usual route for airlines going to Europe, though, and I wonder where all of those people will wake up in the morning. I wonder if it is somewhere fun. I wonder if anyone looked out the windows and glanced down at the little places they are flying over and leaving behind to go somewhere fun. Let’s say Venice. Why not?

I went inside. Got cleaned up. Sat down at my computer to check the work email one last time, and do a few quick work related things that were on my mind. Set a fantasy team, checked the address of a meeting I have tomorrow. Attempted, once more, to wrestle this week into control. Succeeded, for half a second, in not thinking about the things I should be doing around here. Utterly failed at ignoring the work required of me next week or the week after. Then I recited the usual ritual: after that, there will be less today, and it will be easier.

Dear reader, this is a lie we tell ourselves every week. And already, my calendar is piling up into mid-October.

I was called down to dinner. We had barbecue chicken baked potatoes. We had barbecue chicken baked potatoes because my lovely bride had picked up some scallions. She doesn’t care about them, but I think scallions are a wonderful addition to most any plate.

Also, I do not have a good grasp of scallion-to-plate ratios. There’s a whole bag in the crisper. I retrieved it, found the good knife, pulled some onions out of the bag, considered what was in my hand, put some back, and started cutting. This was what I wound up with.

Note to self: four scallions is a lot of scallions.

They’re presented here for maximum comedic effect, but no matter how I pile and photograph them, that’s a lot of scallions. I was able to move things while cutting and eating so it didn’t seem like I was having a potato with my scallion plate. But there was a bite or two, right at the end, where it seemed no better than just pulling a handful right of the ground and eating it in your garden.

If you grow scallions I may come by and do just that. Not tonight. I’m good for tonight. But in the future.

music / photo / Rowan / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
16
Sep 26

We got the shirts

Spent the day working on today’s class, and tomorrow’s class, and also beginning to grade things that were turned in at midnight, Tuesday. And also all of the things that come with the job that are sorta related to the job. The biggest part of it is logging in to some system, service or platform over and over and over. The rest of it moves pretty quickly, happily enough, and I can get back to class things. This, I thought to myself today, is where I wrestle this week into control. And also tomorrow. Possibly Friday.

If I don’t have it by then, well, it’s the weekend and that’ll be great.

It’ll be Friday before we know it.

Before I knew it, today, it was time to head to campus for Org Comm.

The door knob fell off the door. I broke a pen. These two things happened within about four minutes of one another. (At least the elevator, electricity, and plumbing worked!) I kept everyone a safe distance from me after that, just in case I was developing super strength or telekinesis. I did not develop super strength or telekinesis. Well, I don’t know that I didn’t. I might have a superpower now, and just haven’t realized it yet. Super power origin stories are all just a tiny bit different, aren’t they? I do know I’m not invisible, but I don’t know if I can fly. Hang on, let me just open this window …

We talked about what makes sports organizations unique. We talked about the politics involved with sports. We talked about whether this competition or that competition is a sport. That one is silly, but students are always invested in this debate. Now I just have to keep that up. Next week we start talking about branding.

After class we hopped in the car and drove across town, well a few towns I guess.

We went to a public garden which, until this experience I am embarrassed to say I didn’t even know existed. They have more than 1,100 acres of gardens, woodlands, and meadows and over the years have created one of the premier horticultural display gardens in the country. It was dusk when we arrived, and we were there for a little concert, which happens there a lot. They also have seasonal attractions, educational lectures, courses, and workshops, and it is too bad, really, that it is an hour from our house.

The show was outdoors. A little square of land had been cut out of the trees. A path ran through it. The crew had hauled out several hundred old bamboo-style bar chairs. There was a stage that looked like it emerged straight from the trees. Behind it, we learned, was a fountain, which was synched up to a few songs. And soon after we arrived Guster came on stage.

This was their first show back after a six-week break. And everything about the place created a very chill environment for a band that normally sees a little more hype and energy from the crowd. Try as they might, only this one section worked themselves up. Of course they were right in front of us.

I think this is the song where The Yankee, way back when, really figured out she liked the band. Also, I’ve created a monster. This is only the second time we’ve seen them this year, she’s keeping count and saying we must step up our game.

Anyway, we got the shirts. I think they wound up giving them away.

We were on row E. My lovely bride and I met her god-sisters (just go with it) at the concert. We all had a nice time. Much rock was had, also some roll.

I was trying to count … I’ve seen Guster maybe 12 or 14 times over the years now, also in six states, but never in the same venue twice.

It was a nice set, with 23 or 24 songs. It was quite chill, I think that unnerved the band a bit. But we had fun, and I guess everyone else was thinking about tomorrow. I hope tomorrow is like today.

Nah nah nah. Nah nah nah nah. Like today.

I try to put one more song up, maybe next week, and then figure out when we can see them live again.

bespoke / books / photo / Rowan / Tuesday — Comments Off
15
Sep 26

Yeah, but look at that jacket

It’ll be fine, but this is one of those weeks that feels like it is self-contained for good reason. It feels like one of those weeks where the design of the rollercoaster tricks your conscious mind that there is peril ahead. It feels like the sort of week that will feature that scene in every dramatic naval movie: we had to close this section off, and sacrifice some true blue sailors and friends, to save the rest of the vessel and, now, until the end of this scene at least, we will anguish over it for award season.

Yeah, I have no idea what that means. What it means is that if I can keep this week on the rails, keep it moving forward, and keep the events of the week within this week, then it won’t spill over into other weeks and we will, thus, see this week as a success.

There’s absolutely nothing going on as dramatic as all of that, but it just feels like one of those weeks. Next week won’t. The week after that definitely will.

I had a meeting with a student today to discuss social media. The student wound up doing two brief interviews with two of my colleagues. One faculty member discussed the nonverbal communication class she is teaching. She deftly shooed me out of the room with the coolest nonverbal signal ever. I stepped out an interview was had. I retreated to my office and tried to remember everything I learned in my own nonverbal class way back when. Another professor stopped by to talk about his research, and that was the subject of our second brief interview. It was great. This professor is a get-him-started-watch-him-go sort. He does it with such enthusiasm that it is hard not to want to lean into the conversation. Then the three of us sat around for a moment and talked about our favorite ways to end interviews.

I have three key questions I asked at the end of most interviews. You’ll have to pay me tuition to learn what they are.

I walked over to the other building, where my class is held in the fourth floor sauna. I prepared accordingly today, even though the heat outside has loosened its grip, the room is still a little overly warm. So I went with a seersucker jacket.

I bought that as a gag last year. I’ve worn it twice. Last night I thought, Why not? All day, no one said anything about it. I could take this to mean I did that right, or I could infer that no one was willing to confront me about the choices I’d made. What do you think?

The pocket square makes it all work. That was a last second add this morning. Brought the whole thing to life, I’d say.

Maybe the students are all too dazzled by today’s conversation and repartee to discuss my sartorial choices. We talked about Tarleton Gillespie’s 2010 paper on platforms. The first question someone asked was “Why 15 pages on what the word means?” That’s a fair question, and precisely why we read this paper. I have read Gillespie, I guess, half dozen times in the last two years. It holds up, it sets the tone, and the only problem is that it doesn’t think about how AI or LLMs figure into this at all. I’m sure he’s working on that at Cornell right now. (If you somehow find this and aren’t working on that, I tap danced around an answer for a few minutes and we should collaborate.)

When I teach this class online all of the students have to pose a question about the readings. And since I require to ask a question it seems only fitting to try to answer them. This is great fun, and some of the questions are thoughtful and challenging. Another way I challenge myself is trying to find new ways to answer the same questions. Also, I try to edit myself into something that looks like concision. (You might notice I wrote exactly 1,200 words here for goodness sake.)

Do they pay me by the word? No. Can I renegotiate that part of my contract? Also, no.

Since I’m teaching the class in person this time I am having them ask those questions and I am trying to answer as many of them in a class as possible, or at least what I think are the best ones. Today I got about a third of those in on the Gillespie paper. Also, I tried to play it cool about the reading they’ll do for next Tuesday. It is my favorite one of the semester. And I just have to dazzle them with something else on Thursday.

On the way back to the office I snapped the last photo of the public art installation. We’ve now capture it from all four sides. Here, from this angle, it looks like something bad has happened. Its her eyes. I’m not sure if that’s the intention, my interpretation, or perhaps something about the medium. She looks like she’s in a far away place, though. And only the way her feet work suggest a different story.

On Thursday I’ll make a separate post showing all four of them.

Next week I’ll start taking closer photos. I think there’s a lot to be learned from a closer look.

I wrote that cartoonishly overly dramatic bit at the top of the post, and this is what I’m doing about it. I returned to my office after class and did up some lecture prep for tomorrow and Thursday. I’ll finish each just before the classes. Then I went to the library. So pressing are events I spent time at the library.

Which is to say, not pressing at all.

I got a call on Saturday from the local public library that a book I’d requested via ILL (which is one of the best innovations that we have in a polite and civil society) had arrived, and would I please come and check it out, because the clock is already ticking on its due date.

So I picked that up. Our local library is opened like six hours a day, and it is entirely volunteer-driven; you have to time things right. Tonight I received a casual little invitation to take part and volunteer. A little over-the-shoulder “come work with us” sort of thing.

Maybe it was the jacket.

Anyway, the drive home.

The last few times I’ve been out at sunset I’ve seen that sun scrape happening where the orange light and dark of night meet. I think, I think, it is coming from the same area, but I don’t know what over there could be causing this. It’s a flat region, not a lot of big buildings, and surely that’s not a tree-line thing. One day I’ll get over there to figure it out. Just as soon as I find that pot of gold at the end of the next rainbow, which I’ll pursue just as soon as I finish this book I checked out (because the return clock is already ticking) which I’ll start just as soon as this week is fully under control.

adventures / books / family / Friday / photo / Rowan / sport — Comments Off
11
Sep 26

This fine day

What a fine day this was! It was a fine day! And it followed on the heels of another fine day. Fine days all around, for everyone. You might have to seek out the parts that make a day so, but if you hunt long enough you’ll realize that you’re only making the parameters for your day, anyway, so may as well just get to it. Let the day come to you, which I do to much, and hope it’s fine, or fine the things that redeeming, wonderful, and rewarding in every day.

I’m going to try that one day. But not this day. This was a fine day all of its own accord.

But first, yesterday … I had to walk from the building where my office and some classes are to another building where I have a class. This was previously the sauna, but now it’s just the uncomfortably warm older person’s residence. The weather on the fourth floor of that building reflects what is going on outdoors, I was told. When it is hot, it is hot. Oh, the first three floors were nice and cool last week, but I am left to conclude they just ran out of duct work and insulation for the fourth and fifth floor. But, yesterday, because the temperatures have dipped every-so-slight, I only sweat through two layers of clothes.

In that class we discussed the diffusion of innovation theory. Started with agriculture! Bet you didn’t know that! See? A fine day for discovery. Some of the 19th century work that would go into Everett Rogers’ 1962 classic had to do with things like the spreading and adoption of information. Rogers then pulled on 508 studies across anthropology, sociologiy, education, medicine and agriculture and tried to explain how this theory can help us understand how and why new ideas and tech spread, and the conditions that help with that. Diffusion of innovation is such a beloved thing that a few years ago there was a 50th anniversary celebration for it. For a theory. I knew someone who traveled for that event.

We also talked about binary code and how that makes all of these digital things possible and how innovations can move beyond what designers or early adopters intend. I left them with something to think about. A question about a person becoming ones and zeroes themselves. I think I’m going to let them chew on that for another day or two before we get into it. It’ll make for an interesting mindbender when we get to Walter Benjamin.

On my way back to the office I got the third angle of the statue. From this perspective it looks like something sad has happened. Her face is just so. He’s gripping that hat a little too tight.

It still surprised me, to see that statue. I still think, when I catch it out of the corner of my eye, that it is two actual people in a particular moment.

One more wide perspective, next week, then we’ll start looking more closely at some of the figures’ details.

Last evening we got home and decided to sit outside and read. We know how to party! Also, our Sunday afternoon hot reading date is close to becoming a Thursday evening hot reading date, as well. When the sky is showing off, why not?

At some point, and I hope it is no time soon for selfish reasons, it’ll be cool enough to use the fire pit. Then we’ll be reading pages that smell of smoke and pulp. For other reasons, I am looking forward to using the fire pit, because we need to burn some twigs and branches.

I am reading Adin Dobkin’s Sprinting Through No Man’s Land, about the first Tour de France after the conclusion of World War I. Race designer, and editor of L’Auto, Henri Desgrange put on the most grueling tour possible. Dobkin makes the point a few times here that Desgrange’s ideal of a Tour winner was still coming into focus, even after a dozen races and four years without La Grande Boucle during the Great War. Some of these guys were still in the service. Some had just gotten out and had no time to train. They were going over some of the harshest terrain possible, less than a year after the war had ended, and even into new parts of France. This, for Desgrange, was an exploration, and a statement. While the point had, thus far, always been to sell more subscriptions and issues of L’Auto, it was also important to show France to Europe, and France to the French.

The thing about open road bike racing, even now, is that there is always a lot about the event we, the spectators, don’t know, even with cameras on motorocycles and drone shots and microwave technology. The empty spots in a given race are even more pronounced a century on. And, from here, maybe they don’t matter. But this does.

If there was enough credible source material, I’d read books on important and insightful anecdotes like this all day long.

Desgrange was a colorful and controversial character for many people, but at the same time the man knew what he was doing.

This evening we went to see my god-niece-in-law (just go with it) play her third varsity game at the college level. We saw her debut — she started! — recently and this game was also close enough to get to. Her mom was there. So were her grandparents. And also her godparents-in-law. That’s my in-laws, if you’re trying to keep this straight.

Before the game we met up for pizza with my in-laws and my uncle-in-law. (This gimmick gets confusing, but that’s what makes it fun.) We made it over to the game just as it was getting underway.

You know that old saying about missing the shots you don’t take? Our star player does not have that problem. Put the ball at her feet and she’s going to the cage. In this game her team got their first goal of the season. Then they put up a second goal. Guess who got the assist? And then, her teammates slipped her the ball twice more, and she got her first collegiate goal to tie the game 3-3.

The referee, let us say, enjoyed putting his stamp on the game, such that the other team were able to score with 29 seconds remaining in the game. When he wasn’t doing that, however, he was watching the emerging star do her thing.

We took a family photo after the game. They’d just lost a heartbreaker, they’re still looking for their first win. She was so happy. It’s still early yet, but it looks like maybe she’s found the right place for her — and isn’t that what all of this is about?

We went out for ice cream after. I told you, it was a fine day, just a fine day.

cycling / football / photo / Rowan / Wednesday — Comments Off
9
Sep 26

Give me an inch, I’ll want the whole calendar

I could do so much … or at least get so much done … if I had more time. If I didn’t have other things to do. Also if I didn’t read so much news. Also, if I woke up earlier. This would require my falling asleep earlier, but there was work to do last … and early this morning. Also, I could sleep in, which seemed like a delightful idea when I pulled up the covers in the a.m. hours. I was OK with it when I woke up, mid-morning too. Then, I did the work that needed doing. Finished freestyling some class materials, waded through the email, tread water with the news. Had lunch, read a page or two from a book. But!

But if I had more time in a day to do all of the things I want to do, I could do half of the things I need to do and one-quarter of what I’d like.

I think about that a lot. I think about that a lot because I actually have a a bit of free time. The problem, as ever, is that I’d like more, and I need it to come in large blocks — I’m talking large chunks: 24, 72, 744 hours — rather than a little here, and a little there, later.

For instance, I wanted to get in a bike ride today before class. And because of my timing, and the above, I had enough time for an hour. That’s essentially a long loop around the neighborhood. I rode the four miles into town, and then by the park, and the sheep farms. Took a left in the next crossroads town, and then a right away from there off into the real countryside, just watching the clock tick by on my computer as I wondered, not for the first time, why that particular road vexes me so. I turned before the winery, pointing down into a creek bed, and then up two little hills, to the sod farm.

I enjoyed the misting.

We ride through irrigation setups from time-to-time around here. I always wonder what is spraying me. Hopefully it was water today. It was certainly cold.

After that, it was a right turn, and then riding at tempo for a few minutes to get to the last stretch of road. It’s the middle of the day and I’m in the middle of nowhere and the last turn is a hard right-hander. On the inside of the turn, which you don’t want, is a big chunk of abused potholes. On the outside of the turn is a big wash of sand that never disappears. And after that is a stiff little overpass. So I swung waaaaaay to the outside of the oncoming lane, changing the geometry of the whole turn, and then did the cool-guy stand up ride over the hill. There’s just one mile and change to go from there, so I slowed down, as I continued to watch the clock. Lower the heart rate, cool down quicker. I had a whole strategy: electrolytes, shower, cool down, dress up, go to campus.

None of it worked. Some days it is too warm to cool down, I guess.

Also, I’d been sweating the details about how this particular class session would go. We do a fantasy football league in the org comm in sports class, where small groups form franchises and those franchises do a bit of work together across the semester. But, also, there’s fantasy football bragging rights to be sought. Tonight is the night we were holding the draft. The first game of the NFL season was tonight, too, and I promised I’d try to get them out earlier enough for that. Plus, I learned, the ESPN fantasy platform requires an hour for the behind-the-scenes automation to come together. I don’t know why. So how to do a lot in a little time.

This is what I settled on. For half an hour the franchises would meet. They had to do some basic team stuff, find a name, build some colors, determine their target demos, get registered, and so on. Then we had to fill that hour between when the teams were registered and we could do the draft. While the class was busy thinking about the first, second, and third round draft picks, I took us on a tour of what how org comm and sports comm are correlated, how we can expect that to work out in real life, and why we’re doing this, when we could just be doing fantasy football.

We built an eight-team league. Seven of them are the class. I drafted a team, just so everyone would have an easy win. My strategy was to drive a bunch of guys named Smith, some guys from my alma mater, and then people that are goofy characters or beloved for reasons beyond the fantasy points they can collect. I told my students my plan was to build a team that couldn’t win. It took several picks for them to believe me. I don’t know why. I picked a kicker, Daniel Carlson, in the first round! I picked one of the weaker defenses in the second round.

Anyway, we worked our way through 16 rounds of picks. Some of the new franchises were very excited for their teams. We’ll see how they do soon enough. Most importantly, the timing of all of this worked out, and I got them out with a few minutes to spare.

ESPN sends you an email that evaluates your draft pick. It seems I met my objective.

I walked out of the building in the silver-gray part of the early evening. I drove home in the gloaming.

It was dark when I got there. I sorta hate that. The days are getting shorter again. You can’t help but be aware of that. And that’s what I really hate. If only there was more time.