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Thursday

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9
Apr 26

No one is eating that

We are traveling for a conference. Flew yesterday — conferencing today and through Sunday with almost every moment explicitly or implicitly booked. It’s a nice feeling, I’m tired already.

We saw this while we were out and about. And, if I may, a short reply: No.

I suppose it’s nice of this vending scheme to give you the directions across the top of the machine. Select – Pay – Enjoy. I did not get close enough to select, and you’d think my saying that now would imply some regret, but it does not, and there are two reasons. First, I didn’t want to push any buttons on that device for fear that some chemical scent would leach onto my fingers and give me away the next time I had real barbecue. If there is a food that deserves some sort of dye pack for authenticity, it is this one. And that leads me to the second reason I did not approach that machine. Where I come from, barbecue is a serious endeavor. It comes with a cultural pride and historical traditions, a fusion of many different communities and one of our omnipresent commonalities: the odds are good that we know slow cooked meat better than other people do. There’s heritage, history, and pride in those foodways, and they come together even as they diverge. You don’t get this out of a casserole or a catch of the day. This comes to you because your elders gave it to you, because their elders gave it to them, because just a few generations farther back they knew that this food just barely missed the cut among the classical elements: earth, water, fire, and air. Barbecue would have made the list, but everyone fell for the propaganda of aether for a brief period. (Also because, sometimes, there wasn’t even enough low quality meat to slow cook.)

This is not to say that the people that handed this down to my people are the only people with a food in such an important position. Plenty of cultures have specific food that should be viewed comparably — as they should!

But you’re also not getting me to buy sushi or tamales or bibimbap out of a machine. I’d like to be more respectful of a chef than that. And the food itself! Look, the only way to enjoy this is to have a bad experience with vending machine barbecue and then tell the story, ironically, to everyone you meet for the next 10 days.

Furthermore, I’m not paying for any of that — or the acute food poisoning that must surely follow.

Seriously, how often is that machine’s inventory swapped out? And who knows if they leave the power on overnight. Even the sauce is supposed to be fresh and this isn’t it.

Also, their URL doesn’t work, further depressing my confidence in this product.

To be clear, I would try their barbecue in a conventional model, in a store, fresh off the grill as the grill master intended. I would savor and enjoy it and compliment everyone involved, then I’d buy the sauce as a home product, in great big styrofoam cups or jars at the store, as commerce and transportation convenience demands.

Not out of that contraption.

The conference is a good one. We’ve been coming to it for years. Seeing and working with friends is a joy. It is a shame we can only see them once a year. I have, for ages, suggested we create our own department, our own school, our own university. Or a consulting firm. Or just a nice country club where we can sit and tell jokes. One day they’ll catch up to my vision.

My first responsibility at this particular conference was to serve as a respondent to a panel session titled Consumers Caught Between Giants: Social Media Economics. There were two scholars presenting their work. The authors talk for about 20 minutes on what they’re doing. This is an opportunity for them to share some updates, get some feedback and make some nice professional connections than can inspire ideas for their continued work. One of the scholars is a grad student exploring the motivations of platform users to move to a premium tier, things like exclusive programming and various consumer perceptions. The other is a talented new faculty member. She is looking at, among other things, the value of trust and credibility in a word-of-mouth scenario when passing along social media influencers.

It was a great room, one of those sessions where the conversation at the end was robust, lively, and well received by the people doing the research. The best part was in seeing how much room there is to explore in each of these areas. The only down side was they had to hear me talk for a few minutes about their work. But I knew the people in room wanted to have a go at this, so I tried to keep it light and proficient. Two quick compliments, something you might consider considering, and a question for each of you. Now, let’s hear from everyone else. Because everyone else had a lot to say. And they did!

Sessions like these are great, particularly for newer conference goers like these. Maybe we’ll create some long-time members out of both of them. Unless I talked too much.

Tomorrow, I’ll be participating in a panel. Two more on Saturday. I’ve also filled my schedule with seeing other sessions, networking with friends and colleagues and generally trying to present a reasonably professional, or at least serious, face.

I’m still living in the happy memories of our wonderful Irish vacation. So, I’m sharing extra videos that we didn’t get to at the time. It was a great vacation. I have a lot of footage. This will go on for some time. Enjoy it with me, won’t you?

Not to worry, I know the sheep videos are doing well. I’m going to show at least one more, next week.

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2
Apr 26

To be fair to me, the weather was overcast today

In Rituals and Traditions today, we talked about the future of these things. How do you do that? Peer into my crystal ball, students, and see what I know, for I have thought long and hard about the hybridity of historic rituals with digital-first engagement. This is all about audience immersion, increasing fan accessibility, perhaps more personalized experiences, fancy gear and swag, and evolutions in youth sport.

Blending tech with tradition is going to be the goal in that future. This is going to further boost E-sports, more advanced virtual reality for athletes and fans. It’ll change how we experience live sport, we’ll be talking about mediated attendance which will become a ritual unto itself, and, what I’m excited about, historical reproductions. That led us to a discussion of alt-athletes, which is a term that never took off. Weekend warriors was just better alliteration, I guess. But the idea is sound. People want to play, and millennials are a huge marketplace here. The numbers I found said something like 76 percent of the people there, and much of it is about turning solo activity into team fitness and shared achievement. This looks like club teams and loose orgs, but they’ll vary with varied sports. Ultimately, this could become about finding meaning in sport and identity in exercise and recreation.

Also, you can turn that into a spectator event. In 2021 57,000 people gathered to watch the Crossfit Games. The US Open of surfing draws hundreds of thousands of spectators.

You wonder how many personal rituals are emerging in those athletes, and their fans.

We watched this documentary today in Criticism. It’s a good film, but this is the only clip they’ve put on YouTube, and it in no way explains things. Allow me.

In March 2008 — this story is getting old and I should probably take it out of rotation, but it’s good — a tornado bore down on downtown Atlanta. At the same time, the SEC basketball tournament was underway. A last second desperation shot forced overtime, and kept a bunch of people in the arena. And the arena got hit by the storm. The thought has always been that, perhaps, that shot saved a lot of people’s lives. Roll Tide. The tournament must go on, however, and there are other storms, the venue is unsafe, there are logistical considerations and there’s just a lot going on. We never think, really, when we go to a sporting event, about the hundreds and thousands of personnel hours that go into making an event happen, making it safe, making it enjoyable, and here they had to change plans mid-tournament, with the March Madness selection program just hours away.

Also, Georgia had an improbably run in that tournament. Still not sure how that happened. They weren’t good, but they played over their heads, and so the documentary is about that, too.

(My alma mater was hilariously in and out of the conference tournament in just the one game.)

And, yes, I spent part of the documentary reflexively glancing out the classroom windows. You just don’t break habits of living in places where you can get tornadoes.

Spanish Armada viewpoint.

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19
Mar 26

Beefan and Garveross

The problem with this part of the world is that just about everywhere you turn offers amazing views. Not every place can be a place. And so you have little moments like this, where you just round a bend see something like this. You just park in the middle of the quite road to take a picture and admire the view for a moment.

Up there is the Beefan and Garveross Mountain. The map shows six hours and I think we can see the Glen Head Signal Tower, another one of those Napoleonic era buildings designed to watch out for, and pass the word, that the French were coming. We didn’t go up to it, but it’s apparently a lovely hike. It is a two-story stone building with a commanding view of the ocean to the west and north-west, and two bays to the south.

They were really concerned about the French. And with good reason, when you think about what was going on at the earliest points of the 19th century. This map shows us that 81 of these watch towers were built, covering about three-quarters of Ireland’s coastline.

But if you don’t want to look at that map, have another look at this view. It’s a panorama, click to embiggen.

We journeyed on, stopping at a pub for dinner in a town we were passing through. They forgot about us for a while, or we did not understand the local custom of paying. We wound up being the last ones out of the place, including most of the employees. If a few more minutes had gone by I would have suggested the American custom of dining and dashing, which in this case would have been more like dining, waiting for 45 minutes, and then just walking out the door. And, if anyone magically appeared as we did so I was prepared to say, “Ahhhh, Tim is paying.”

Ever since I found that wallet I keep feeling for it in my pocket. Tim already lost this thing, and he’s getting it back tomorrow. I can’t lose it too.

Also, I explained my personal pocket ritual to my lovely bride. Seventeen years we’ll have been married this summer, more than 20 years together now, and I’ve never said this, and she’s never noticed it. But, when I leave from one place to go to somewhere else I pat down all of my pockets. Keys, wallet, phone, whatever. Just to make sure it is all there.

I think I’ll give that advice to Tim tomorrow, when he and his wife get his back.

Anyway, we paid. Tim did not pay. We left the pub and headed on to Letterkenny. This was a big long move, and I was driving us on some lonely roads. The route sort that went through the dark of a darkest night, looking for taillights and driving on the left. You can depend on the in-dash GPS, which I did. At precisely the moment where it seemed all was lost, when you might be driving off the land into the ocean that is most assuredly somewhere over … there … lights emerge right in front of you. And there was the hotel, and restaurant, and spa, and whatever else goes on here. It feels like the center of the community, and it was lit like an American car dealership.

We’ll be here for two nights, but Tim’s wallet will only be here the one … if I can find where I put it.

Kidding. It’s right here, right next to my wallet. I’ve checked on it 14 times.

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19
Mar 26

Malainn Bhig

This is the spot where our amazing trip took a little turn for the unexpected. Nothing bad. Just … the tiniest diversion from the plan. It was not a setback, but an opportunity. A chance to do something unique for ourselves. But we’ll get to all of that.

While we were driving here, the GPS gave us some bad directions. We wound up in an old farmer’s driveway. He was there too, and he had a nice laugh with us, and a nice chat. The road just seemed to end on his plot. He said, no, it continues on, but told us we weren’t going far in our rental. I’m still not sure if he was insulting the sensibly fuel efficient car or the Americans. We chatted for a minute. He’d lived there is whole life, and probably several generations of his family could have said the same thing. Turn around, go back, take a left, then go over here, and you’ll be there. The place, he said, which was the last place God made, because he’d been saving up for something special.

And maybe that old man knew what he was talking about. Maybe he’s seen it all. Maybe he’s seen enough. Maybe he only had to see this place. Maybe he’s been out in those fields long enough to understand that what we see is always the last place God made, because he’d been saving up for something special.

And, in this case, that’s Malainn Bhig.

Just down from the village of the same name, Mahlainn Bhig is a horseshoe beach, protruding out as the westernmost part of land in the norther part of the country. It’s wonderfully secluded. The parking lot butts up to a farmer’s house and fields. Then you talk down a whole lot of stairs, to this beach that is surrounded on three sides by steep hills and cliffs.

She went down to touch the water, because you can never take the curiosity out of the girl. I love that for her. She said it was very cold. I’m not sure if that needed the firsthand experience. God made another perfect place, but that’s the Northern Atlantic out there, and I can connect the dots.

Above and behind us the sheep were going about their evening grazing, entirely unconcerned about what we were doing down below. You can just sort of see it in this photo, but those horizontal lines on the hillside are the sheep trails. One supposes they can come all the way down to the beach. But, when they realize it’s just sand, they probably head back up, and never come back again. Surely, every generation goes through this.

When you go down the steep stairs, you have to come back up them, and you don’t get the benefit of the switchbacks the sheep have made for themselves. They say there are 174 steps, and I don’t want to make a big deal about it, but I counted a few more.

And it was back at the top, after we’d enjoyed a few quiet minutes on that lovely little beach, when the day took a little unexpected turn, because that’s where I found Tim’s wallet.

Tim is a man who lives in Washington state, he just turned 65 this year. And I know his address because I have his driver’s license, and his Medicare card, and his credit card, and his debit card. He’s surely going to need at least some of those in the future.

We came to learn a fair amount about Tim this evening, but how do you handle this, right there in the parking lot? My lovely bride looked him up on Facebook, but he’s one of those guys who hasn’t used the app in eight or nine years. I walked the little parking lot to see if there was anything else that maybe he dropped. No phone, no other important documents. We wrote him on Facebook, but who knows if that will ever be seen. The Yankee had the inspired idea to message his family members she found on Facebook. That was a good idea.

We considered leaving the wallet in the parking lot, a little leather Easter egg that he may never find. We could ship it to him when we got home. Worst case scenario, we could ~~buy ourselves dinner tonight~~ destroy these documents and Tim would just have to go back to the DMV and all of these other places to replace what he’d dropped. We’d know then that no one else was buying dinner on Tim.

As we thought about all of this, we stood there and enjoyed the sunset.

I like how the sun is dipping just into the little depression of the island there. A bit of Irish magic in this perfectly made place. On the island is the Rathlin O’Birne lighthouse. Built in 1846, and light in 1856, Rathlin O’Birne is about as spartan as they come. There were two keepers cottages and outhouses, and that’s about it. It’s even hard to get on the island. There is no landing place. It apparently requires a perfectly calm sea to get a person over there. And there’s a bit of unique history to that lighthouse. It is, since 1974, supposedly the world’s first nuclear powered lighthouse and the only one in Ireland.

This being Ireland and all, I shared a special Irish legend that I just made up right there on the spot. If you give someone a kiss just as the sun sets over the sea, in Ireland, you’re guaranteed to return one day. Got a smooch. We’re coming back.

About three hours later we heard from Tim’s wife. We’ve been making arrangements, and they’ll come to us tomorrow. I said, just tell them to come to our hotel. At least we know where that is, they can map it, and believe me, they’ll be blessed to do it for the favor we’re doing them.

But, first, there’s one more spot to see tonight, and Tim is going to buy us a big dinner.

Kidding.

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19
Mar 26

Slieve League

This is up the way up the mountain, the name Sliabh Liag, which means mountain of stone pillars. Seems appropriate. We were given the option of walking or driving. Driving cost a few bucks, but it was worth it. It’s a single track up the mountain, and right over that rise is the Atlantic, and some of the most dramatic, and the second-highest sea cliffs in Europe.

This is a panorama. If you click the image it’ll open in another browser window, and you can see this just a bit bigger, but, still, not quite as impressive as what we saw. This tops out at 1,972 feet.

That’s the view from a place called Bunglass. A place we lingered for quite a long while. It was, as you can tell, worth it.

The writer, librarian, and naturalist Robert Lloyd Praeger wrote about the “One Man’s Path,” which is here at Sliege League. Praeger called it one of the most remarkable walks to be found in Ireland. Thirty years prior, on the other side of the country, he conducted a survey of a small island and added 90 new species to the Irish flora and fauna and five of them were new to science.

If I added a bunch of new species to the books I would never stop thinking about that. I don’t know how he was able to enjoy the rest of his walks, but he was Irish, and he had places like this to see. I wonder if he saw this he thought, I should go to that little rock and see if that’s a different kind of moss. It could be my next new species.

Here’s the beginning of the walk, or the end. We went up just a tiny little way, but only for this view. Apparently it would take several hours to do the whole thing. Who needs that, when you’ve got this?

I’ve been wanting a picture like this — well, sort of like this — for 10 years. Almost got it. Got this close.

I like these stone steps. The rest of these photos are featuring those steps. Someone put them all there, and we don’t think about things like that enough, and so I thought about that on every sturdy step.

Though I don’t think I can photograph them very well.

But if you go up all of those stone steps, almost to the top of this hill, you’ll turn left, and then continue on that long walk, across the ridge line, with ever-more-grand views of the cliffs and the ocean.

Look at how the peat is growing right up to the rock steps, or probably more accurately, how the rock steps were cut into the peat. Someone had to make that decision too, probably. Or they followed a human or animal path. But suppose a foreman was out there, pointing and drawing and cutting a line. You’d like to think they agonized over that. I’d like to think that, anyway, because that’s a thing I’d agonize over. Whoever made that call, though, probably just wanted to get this done so they could get back in for dinner.

I wonder where the stone steps came from. Probably from the hillside through which we drove on the way up here. They must be well considered, at least a bit. You want stones to be flat on two sides, top and bottom. Surely they didn’t want to waste time on stone masonry here. They’re just steps, after all. So where, then, did the cast offs go?

This place figures, of course, into Ireland’s history and folklore. One of the largest Neolithic cemeteries in the Europe is nearby. An island just off this place holds the ruins of an early Celtic Christian monastery. If you walk along the top you can see an early monastic site and some of the ancient beehive huts, where monks sought solitude, spiritual connection, and help kept the craft of the written word alive.

I had no idea this was here. I didn’t plan the trip, or the day, and I had no idea this even existed. But I’m so glad we saw it. Glad we had the chance to linger here for an hour or so.

This is one of those places I’d come back to, specifically here, to linger, to see more, to see the same, and to find out what’s on the other side of that trail.