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In the shade of history

Finals begin tomorrow. The emails should begin any moment now. The grading continues apace. Every time I feel like I have my arms around it, I find a new thing to look at. So I grade some more. Then I’m done. And then a late assignment rolls in.

Which will allow me to move effortlessly into the deadline talk as the big, final, speech of the class. Everyone will love that.

Something else just popped up for me to assess.

None of this is hard, mind you. It’s part of the job. It’s a bit like laundry, though: you’re never done, not really. All day long like this, and yesterday and most of Monday, too.

Oh, here’s two more things in the ol’ inbox now.

It was three degrees warmer today. The thermometer said 47, but the wind chill held things down to an uncomfortable 39 degrees. I went out for a bike ride at the ~~warmest~~ least cold part of the day. I quickly realized I was under-dressed. Wrong jacket. Also, I forgot the ear muffs. But my hands and toes stayed comfortable.

The wind was everywhere, and that’s what we’re blaming the whole thing on. It wasn’t that my legs were bad, it is that there was a headwind in every direction. I rode a big rectangle, so I rode in every direction, and there was always the wind.

And the close passers. Drivers were brutal today.

All of it was enough to make me cut the ride short. But I got in 20 miles, and I was able to see this, whatever it is.

There are fresh produce stands all over around here. They’re all empty now, of course. Some of the smaller ones got rolled away from the road at the end of the season, but most seem like semi-permanent fixtures. So, too, are a few of the homemade-built bus stands. I’ve found no little libraries, as yet, and I don’t know what’s happening here at Cedar Lane Junction. Maybe it’s a mini-pharmacy, or a bait shop, or both. I do know, from archival map photos, that sign has been slowing peeling away for a little more than a decade now.

Sometimes you see a stand of trees and wonder if they were left there, or planted there. Someone had a room with windows to the east of these trees and they knew there would come a day when they’d get tired of sunsets. Serious astrophysical prescience.

That’s a simple stand of two rows of trees. They are bracketed on each side by houses. And, no, that UAP to the right of the sun is not a Photoshop artifact. It’s in the raw photo, a lens flare within a series of them. That’s just going to happen when you’re shooting from the hip.

Anyway, I liked where the sun was and how the clouds were lined up, and I began to wonder about the chance nature of trees on old farmland.

A century ago this land was owned by a couple named Campbell. Asbury’s family could trace it’s roots back to the colonial era, right here in this community. Alice was the granddaughter of Irish immigrants. I wonder if they ever stood around that spot and stared off that way. I wonder what they dreamed about. The man died in 1992, not far away from here. She died in 1999. It looks like he served in World War I, but that’s a rabbit hole I’m saving for a different day.

I infer from the dusty old records that they sold the land in the 1930s, an all too common tale of the era, I’m sure.

Let’s go back even farther, though.

This is the 20th installment of We Learn Wednesdays. I ride my bike across the county to find the local historical markers. Including today’s installment, we’ll have seen 38 of the markers in the Historical Marker Database. And this one is pointing to one of the older moments the county recognizes. It’s colonial-era, even.

The fabled oak the sign references was about a quarter-of-a-mile away. It fell to the ground in 2019, having cast cool shade on man and beast for an estimated 600 years. That was the spot, according to the legend, where the original Quakers signed a treaty with the indigenous residents. That tree was in my grade school books. Probably yours too! Probably because it was one of the rare treaties with native populations that was honored. Beneath that tree was where the earliest white residents were buried. Indeed, Betsy Ross’ father, a third-generation immigrant from Wales, a man named Samuel Griscom, was buried there. He owned a lumberyard and was a master carpenter. (He helped build the bell tower at Independence Hall!)

Every town in the state, 565 of them, was given a seedling from the Salem Oak after it fell. (A follow-up story will soon be demanded.) Other groups of Quakers got still more seedlings for replanting at their meeting houses. This group, the Salem Friends, apparently maintained ownership of the tree and they were giving away leaves and small bits of the tree as keepsakes.

I’m glad I wasn’t here for that. I would have wanted a piece. Perhaps I would have gotten one. And then there would eventually be the desire to make something interesting with it. And great pains would be required to be sure it was done correctly. The curse of a not at all accomplished confident or competent craftsman.

When someone uses the old blood and sweat expression, this is what I think of.

I bet old Samuel Griscom would have known what to do with it, but I digress.

They had a memorial service for the tree. One of the Friends wrote an obituary that summer:

The Salem Oak’s life span was double the 300-year average of most white oaks. In that time, she witnessed the clearing of her forest home and many other events that history has forgotten. She saw Lenni Lenape, early Quakers, European settlers, free African Americans, and their descendants, grow, build, and gather around her. She watched as Revolutionary War soldiers marched through her peaceful town. She impressed Charles Lindbergh with her fall foliage as he flew over Salem on Oct. 21, 1927, on his way from Atlantic City to Wilmington, in celebration of his solo trip across the Atlantic Ocean. She saw travelers and shipments of goods arriving at the Salem port down the street, and witnessed the birth of industry in Salem, as a huge bottling plant was built behind her.

The mighty Oak watched generations bid farewell to their loved ones as they were laid to rest around her. She offered silent comfort to those who came to visit their deceased friends and family, embracing them with the shelter and cool shade of her vast canopy. She offered a peaceful place for sunrise services, social gatherings, and quiet reflection. She enticed hundreds of children to try to stretch their arms around her massive trunk and provided them with a giant prop to run around and hide behind while playing. And she inspired local artists to try to capture her beauty, her significance, her peacefulness, her impressive stature, and her sheer awesomeness, in every medium.

In 2000, she was bestowed the honor of being named a Millennial Landmark Tree, through the America the Beautiful Fund. This recognized her as one of the top 50 trees in the country with historical significance. In 2016, she was declared the largest White Oak in New Jersey by the Department of Environmental Protection. At that time, she towered 103 feet tall, with a circumference of 22 feet, 4 inches. She had a crown fit for royalty, spanning 104 feet.

It’s easy to see why people are romantic about trees.

In the middle of that oak’s life, all of the land around it was a proprietorship. The Quakers owned it for about 30 years, having purchased it from Sir George Carteret, who was strapped for cash in the 1670s. (And weren’t we all?) In 1702 it returned back to Queen Anne, as a colony. That’s an entirely different saga.

You wonder how that sort of thing weighed on the people who walked into this building during that time. These walls would look familiar to them, but so much that they would see from the doorway, today, would surely be a shock.

These were the people that sailed to the New World to find some freedom, so perhaps they would be pleased that their religious descendants are still here.

In next week’s installment of We Learn Wednesday, we’ll take a glance at a 19th century home and store. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

memories / music / photo / Re-Listening / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
12
Dec 23

Hanging a memory

Today I learned that a hack saw, a fine-tooth blade designed to cut metal, will slice through plastic with no trouble. Go figure. The plastic I was cutting was a little winged flange near the top of one of the outdoor garbage cans. I’m sure it provides strength or stability, or both, to the rim, but it’s also tearing at the weather stripping in the trunk of my car.

It’s doing that because I have to take the garbage the seven miles to the convenience center. Today was that day, so I deployed the hacksaw. And, wouldn’t you know it, the can got in the trunk just that much easier. In the backseat, two more bags a tub of recycling and a handful of cardboard. It’d been two weeks since I’d made this run, hence the extra haul. It took three minutes to unload, and about 26 minutes to make the round trip.

It was sunny, but cold today. A bit windy. I talked myself out of a bike ride. Listen to your body, they say. I didn’t argue the point. I just didn’t feel enthusiastic about it, given the temperature. Tomorrow, then, when it’ll be two degrees warmer.

Besides, Joe The Older was outside. We have two neighbors named Joe. The one across the way is Joe The Older. Retired developer and buckle-winning horseman. He built most of this neighborhood. Knows everyone in the tri-county area. Related to Betsy Ross. Apparently an uncle of his once owned FDR’s favorite yacht. Stand there and talk to Joe The Older for a while and you’ll get a history lesson of the Forrest Gump order. He’s a delightful man.

Just this weekend we met Joe The Younger, who is on our side of the street. They’ve only been here about a year longer than us. He’s in regional sales. New dad. Keeps an impressive yard. Big, easy smile. And so this is how I will keep them straight: Joe The Older, and Joe The Younger.

Anyway, I had a plumbing question. Figured the wise older gentleman would have an answer. Turns out, he did! The answer: nothing. It’s the best kind of solution, really.

We chatted for a while, he was taking a break from washing his truck and telling me about the deer and the foxes and the neighbors and the soil. A man so thoroughly invested in the land he knows where the marl ends and the sand begins. I told him my seven soil category story. No one likes that story, but Joe The Older respected it. My kind of guy.

I finally framed this newspaper plate. It was a stressful little exercise, trimming aluminum to fit a frame with oversized tin snips. This plate is for the front page of a 2015 newspaper. It’s a one of a kind, so there were no do overs. I checked my measurements very carefully.

This is the campus newspaper that I advised a lifetime ago. Every year we got a few of the plates from the printer. We gave one to the outgoing editor-in-chief as a thank you and keepsake. I kept one too, and for this very reason.

I had Sydney in a class her freshman year. She was the quiet, smart one. Severely smart. Sat in the back. She just wanted to do the work. I don’t know how you can be that quiet and, still, have everyone around know what you’re about. She is kind. Everyone came to admire her. Everyone saw how hard she worked, and how talented she was. In her senior year of college she was a section editor of two local papers and the editor-in-chief of her campus paper. I think she took over at least one of those locals that year, too. She was also a 4.0 student. She had, and she earned, every accolade.

Sydney won a Pulitzer Prize last year for a national reporting story she worked on for the New York Times. I work that into every conversation I can. And that’s why I have this plate on display.

This was a successful newspaper. Alongside Sydney on that year’s editorial board there’s a big shot investigative reporter. There is a business owner, two people at different agencies. Another does PR for a national construction concern. One of the prominent writers is now the director of a museum out west. They’ve earned a lot of success for themselves in just a few short years. I think about them from time-to-time. And, now, I’ll have that to glance at. A Pulitzer Prize winner put that together in her early days, and I had the good fortune to work with her for four years.

I’m about two chats away from telling Joe The Older about it.

Let us return to the Re-Listening project, where I am playing all of my old CDs in the order in which I acquired them. I’m writing about them here to pad out the site a bit, but also to enjoy the trip down memory lane, and to publish some great music. And that’s where we are today, talking about a record that was published in 1992, but I bought it in 2004.

I bought it, in fact, on August 7th, 2004, the night that I was admitted to grad school. I went to the movies and bought two CDs that night. It was, as you might imagine, a big celebration.

The record was “Hollywood Town Hall,” by The Jayhawks. I’d just finished “Tomorrow the Green Grass,” and wanted to backfill the catalog, and so those CDs were older Jayhawks projects. They were as good a choice as graduate school was.

This is the first track. The right guitar, the dreamy organ, Gary Louris with Mark Olson singing the harmony. It was a terrific start.

The singer-songwriter Joe Henry wrote the liner notes. Today it reads like this is a concept album. Henry has worked with the Jayhawks on a few records, but he doesn’t appear in the credits here. Maybe he was just being clever.

The album cover feels like that, too. Someone had to drag that sofa out into the snow for this photo series.

The album, which got to 11 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart and number 192 on the Billboard 200, takes its name from that place, population 1,060 in 1992. It’s no bigger today. I wonder if anyone there knew the record and enjoyed it. It certainly seems out of place in 1992. There was grunge, late-stage guitar rock, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston and Ice Cube. And then up in Minnesota these guys were playing music that sounded like the Flying Burrito Brothers.

This song is one of my favorite alterna-pop tunes of all time. I play this on repeat every time I play the record. Since 2004 I have occasionally tried to figure out what falling rain and water sounds like. The paper and napkins I’ve scribbled on, trying to balance onomatopoeia, simile and metaphor. To everyone’s delight, I never get it right.

So this was August 2004 for me. I listened to these records, and probably not much else, for the next six months. So, apologies to anyone who had to be in a car with me. Because of that, though, when I saw them live late the next spring my future wife was well versed in the catalog.

In the next installment of the Re-Listening project we’ll hear The Jayhawks’ 1997 record. I bought that one the same night, but the five years between them was a lot of time. The “Sound of Lies” was different. A bit out of step, and out of time, but their own time. Karen Grotberg returned, Marc Olson left, Tim O’Reagan stepped in. The band was re-shaping itself, in the studio, in front of their fans. The experiment continued with sweaty drinks and art galleries. Or something. For me it was sunny days, blaring stereo speakers and trying to figure out what that one sound was … but we’ll get to that.

cycling / Monday / photo — Comments Off
11
Dec 23

Bring on finals

This is the last week of classes and, near the end of the week, the beginning of finals. The pace of things will simultaneously slow, and also speed up. It’s a fun time!

The highlight of the weekend was right … here. Or somewhere in this mile.

This was mile 20,000 on a bike for me. It took two bikes, two bike computers, three helmets, three pairs of cycling shoes and probably five or six chains, but I made it to 20,000 miles right there, on that 35 mile ride. The cycling spreadsheet — yes, I have one of those — told me it was coming. It’s a round number, sure, but arbitrary enough. So I’ve been eyeing it for a good while now. And then, suddenly, it seemed like I might hit it this year. And then it was inevitable. And now, here we are.

What that means is … nothing really. It’s just a number, right? It isn’t even a big number, not really. What means something is the quality of the rides. And they’re good. And this one was delightful. When I wasn’t huffing and puffing I was smiling at the opportunity. It was December and I was out in shorts and a short sleeve jersey. An early Christmas gift, really.

It also means I’m going to start shopping for a new bike. OK, it means I’ll start looking in the spring. Getting a new ride and watching it sit inside for two or three months seems a little cruel. Hitting 20,000 miles was the goal, though. And even though I could see it coming on the spreadsheet, now I have to make bike decisions.

That’ll be difficult. Maybe I should have set the goal at 25,000 or 30,000.

Time, once again, for the site’s most popular weekly feature. Let’s check in with the kitties. I say that every week, but everyone agrees, and the stats prove the point: this is the most popular thing on the site. The cats think so, most of all.

Phoebe, in a cabinet, surveying all of the lands and fields within her dominion. It is full of abundant resources and majestic views. All of her subjects are at peace, and all of her needs are meet. It is a bountiful realm, and she is pleased.

Poseidon, meanwhile, the court jester, is staying warm with the radiant hit from the oven.

You could stop that, but his neediness will exceed your patience, every time.

It is definitely snuggle season. If they’re together, it is too cold.

In the 20s at night. It is too cold.

I saw this combine on Sunday. There are still a few cornfields around that the farmers have to get to — fields where dent corn is drying I assume — but they are still out there doing the weekend work.

And I just wanted to remind myself, once more, that I saw a nice concert Friday night.

We’re still singing about it today.

bespoke / cycling / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
5
Dec 23

Rhythm, and a lot

I gave a last lecture in a class night. The students were thrilled. I have two more final lectures to prepare for the term. After that it’s finals. Between now and then: the continual effort to get everything sorted and graded. And then finals.

Well, then two deep breaths, and starting work on next term.

And then finals.

Yesterday I was thinking about the natural rhythms of a college campus. In my mind they’ve always been divided into weeks. And for the first few weeks you’re trying to find the term’s beat. Then you grab it. Then midterms, and you grab onto the rhythm once more. Something unexpected might happen, so you try to find it again, and maybe you do. Then finals, and it’s over. And, suddenly, there’s the next term’s cadence to think about. I was thinking about how you never sit in the pocket long, even if nothing unexpected comes up the best you can do is maximize yourself in that rhythm for two months and change. This is where the discipline comes in. The determined can thrive in that pocket. If you can’t, you always feel behind.

I haven’t felt behind — I haven’t in a long time, I guess, so maybe I’m doing well with the meta-rhythm — but I have had to find the new beat.

I started today’s bike ride with no real plan, but I did one of the regular two routes, and added on an extra little bit, featuring that newly discovered road. You know the one. Two lanes, no houses, only the woods on either side. It eventually leads to a busy four-lane road which has a nice clean, broad shoulder. I got a honk and a semi-close pass on that road, right next to the “Report Aggressive Drivers Call 9-1-1” sign.

The universe does enjoy a good laugh.

My fastest tenth mile split was all the way back around at the end of the route, near our neighborhood, where I really poured on the coals and worked up a respectable 24.34 miles per hour. I set no Strava PRs on this ride, generated no power. But I did stay warm. It was 44 degrees when I set out, and 42 or so when I got back. I wear several layers and, today, I added some wrap around ear muffs. Game changer.

It’s hard to get to my phone under all of those layers, plus there are the gloves, and it was gray today, so it didn’t seem worth the struggle. Instead, I just … enjoyed myself?

I enjoyed myself immensely.

Instead of ride photos or ride videos, allow me to share a new shirt I recently made.

Rather proud of that.

In between grading things — and I have been grading a lot of things so far this week — I have also started a new solution for my cufflinks.

Perhaps I should back up. I have a lot of cufflinks. A few years ago I found the style that I favored, and I got a few reasonable deals on french cuff shirts and so I was set. Then the pandemic came along. One thing I did to while away some time was to start making my own cufflinks. Find some good materials, establish a rhythm, and you can make a few pretty quickly. They’re lightweight, comfortable, flexible and functional. I gave quite a few to our old neighbor who liked, too. But I still have a lot.

In the old house, I had a drawer in the bathroom vanity where they were stored. It was functional, but I ran out of soon ran out of space for them.

I have a lot of cufflinks.

I was going to make a special drawer, but then we got great new jobs, put the house on the market, moved and so on. The vanity in our bathroom here, however, does not lend itself to that same drawer idea. So my cufflinks, all of ’em, have been living in Ziploc bags inside of an old grocery bag. But that’s not conducive to making a daily selection.

This is my first experiment.

I have a lot of cufflinks. But look! Room for more!

cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
4
Dec 23

Cat character analyses

As we start the week off with the site’s most popular weekly feature, I offer you something of a character analysis.

First, we’ll take a glimpse at Phoebe, in one her mid-day favorites, the stairs, enjoying the sun that comes in from the northern windows.

On a different day this week, at a similar time of day according to the photo’s time stamp, Phoebe takes a turn at modeling.

Not to be outdone, on still a different day, Poseidon gives it a try.

Note how they each use their tail in those last two photos.

And on a fourth different day, in the same part of the day, and in the same spot.

The kitties are doing just fine.

Something else that’s doing well is this little rose bush, which I moved into the basement a while back. I have seven plants down there now, and the rose is the best performer.

This is a plant the previous owners left. They had it sitting on the back stairs. We hadn’t moved it from there prior to sliding it indoors for the weather. It never did as well on the stairs, as it is doing in the basement. It might be getting a bit more water now, go figure.

Some of the other plants had the traditional outdoors-indoors struggle. I’ve got lighting for them, but the humidity and temperature transitions can cause some small problems. Most are now beginning to bounce back, though. Now I just have to remember to not forget the basement nursery.

Which reminds me.

We had a bike ride with a friend on Saturday morning. Did the usual route as a trio. Then, my lovely bride went off to do something else and our friend had to head elsewhere for her afternoon plans, so I road some more. I turned a 21-mile ride into a 42 mile ride. Part of that was discovering this new road. It was so quiet. So still. So … odd. The fog didn’t hurt that mood. (And, now, neither does this lossy format compression.)

When I got in I realized that our friend has one of the fastest times on that segment on Strava. It’s a road she took on three years ago, long before she knew we existed. A road she’s probably forgotten.

Today, I returned to that road and raced her. I patterned my tempo over the rest of the route to be ready for that 2.77 mile stretch. I timed it so I could hit the segment with good momentum. I did not waste time fiddling with my phone. I did not sit up for water. I did not take in the sights, creepy as they may be.

I beat her by time by 21 seconds.

I choose to see that as an omen for a good week of bike riding.