Thursday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Thursday

Cold and new sweatshirts

It was cold here today. At the peak of the afternoon the thermometer, which is, of course, an app, said it was 32 degrees. But, just below that, all proud and sure of itself, was a line that read: Feels like 22°. But at least it was sunny, here on the inner coastal plain — where the heavy land and the green sands meet.

Yesterday it was 50, for a time. Right now, this evening, it feels like 15.

All of these numbers have been verified against other outputs, because I’m not the simple sort of person who thinks we don’t need weather forecasters or forecasts anymore because we’ve got phones.

Some people think of it that way. I talked with one over the holidays. He was playfully griping about his wife always watches the weather, and why is there so much weather, and where did the sports go on the nightly news.

Rare is the day when I can tell people what I do and they want to talk about it. So we did. And I’m pretty sure he came to regret it. As I explained … ahem … the National Weather Service, and Accuweather, and IBM and it’s super computer and The Weather Channel and the private equity firm that owns them now, and satellites and buoys and forecasters … to a man who has been in commercial aviation for longer than I’ve been alive.

Just your random guy, this would make sense. But you have to figure, a man that flew for Delta, and now boasts of flying rich people around on their whim, would have some passing familiarity with the demands of the atmosphere on the needs of his job. But, no, it’s right there, in your phone.

Friends, it is not.

Anyway, cold, but sunny. I will take the former because of the latter. I accepted it cheerily today, albeit with a shiver, and because this was the last night of the season when civil twilight arrives before 5:30 p.m. We are, friends and loved ones, making progress out of the darkened season.

It occurred to me the other evening, as I put on a fancy new sweatshirt, that a simple and small thing I would do if I had no cares in the world money, would be to buy up a bunch of sweatshirts. Don’t get me wrong, I have a lot of old sweatshirts, several of them decades old, and they occupy an important place in my mind and in my wardrobe. But there’s something magical about slipping on that new sweatshirt the first few times, when the inside is just so.

It is the tactile version of the new car smell. It is soft and luxurious, and maybe in a way most of our torsos don’t deserve. Of course, you say, that’s silly. When has a torso ever deserved anything. Others will say, a new sweatshirt isn’t an extravagance. But, no, I’m saying I’d figure out how many wearings and washings I could get out of each shirt before it didn’t fit this criteria any more. Then I’d give the thing away, and wear a new one. How many would that be a winter? Thirty? Forty? If I had money that I’d never miss, that’s a thing I would do.

I thought of that recently while I was slipping on this handsome little fellow.

It was a gift from my godmother-in-law (just go with it). She has three of us to shop for, though really she doesn’t need to buy me anything, so every year her sons-in-law and I get basically the same thing. And she’s good at it. I have some really nice lightweight pullovers from her thoughtfulness.

And if I spread out wearing them, they’ll last a long time. Decades, maybe.

I managed to avoid a Thursday meeting about a Tuesday meeting, which was to precede a meeting next week. I wrote something that kept the meeting from happening. I wrote it on spec last night. It was requested today. I blew it up and rewrote the thing, just to make a few points more carefully and clearly.

And then I wrote a document that, hopefully, will be of some help to my faculty colleagues. Our university does a wonderful job of building up support services and resources for the student body. And what is in the surrounding community is quite robust, as well.

The problem I have seen, on every campus I’ve worked on and probably the ones I attended, as well, is one of awareness. Not everyone knows about all of these programs. How could they? Why should they? So in each class I build a one-page document with some of the most important resources and share it with my students. Last semester I thought, I should share this with my colleagues, in case any of them would like to add to whatever they distribute. I did that earlier this week, and that led to a few people sharing what they share.

I began to think of synthesis. I said I would pull all of these together once the semester got under its own power and nothing needed my attention anymore.

Well, that’s silly, of course. Everything will always need our attention. So I just did the thing today. And what emerged was a three-page Google Doc full of campus and community resources. And maybe someone can make good use of them in the days ahead. Or maybe we can keep building the thing out in weeks and months to come, because, even at three pages, it is hardly complete.

So I wrote six useful pages before lunch. And then I had lunch. And late this afternoon I have built two more lectures. That means … hold on, I’m doing math.

…

Seriously, this takes a while …

… probably longer than one of those documents I wrote this morning …

I think approximately half of my semester’s course work is laid out.

Barring the unforeseen and small changes.

(This is the part I’ll keep repeating, if only to see the list grow smaller.) That should leave me only with grading the work of 93 people throughout the term, plus the 15 or 20 things I’ve planned to write, plus finishing two research projects, and three panel presentations. Plus committee work, my contract packet, whatever else pops up, and so on.

So I have some free time between now and early May, clearly. Obviously I volunteered to present guest lectures via Zoom in Minneapolis if a teacher somewhere needed it.

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8
Jan 26

It’s true, you really can — and also moats, and a hardware store

There were actually more interesting parts to yesterday. I just didn’t tell you about them because I had the parts that I wrote about on my mind. Also there were parts that weren’t worth telling, so I didn’t tell them. The opposite is also true.

But the other parts of the day were like this. I had to drive somewhere to return something. The recipient was not home, which was my fault. We’d vaguely said “afternoon” and that was it. So I left the thing on the guy’s front porch, just beneath his Ring camera, which I’m sure saw me walk up, press the ring button, ran a series of not-at-all-intrusive algorithmic searches and cross-database and multinational platform searches. Also, three satellites were contacted in informing the guy that a person was on the porch.

People, you can just get a dog.

It was not intrusive because I was, of course, in this person’s yard. On his porch, to be specific. I very carefully avoid the yard in case people are put off by that. If a man’s house is his castle, then his yard is his moat. His driveway and sidewalk, though, are asking for it.

So ring the Ring. Rang the Ring? Rang the Rang? I pressed the button and waited for an appropriate amount of time. Left what I came to leave, and then returned down the sidewalk and driveway to my car, and tried to exit the neighborhood in a different way, in case I just caught him off guard and he came out and we had to have an awkward yard exchange. “Good to see you, and, dude? You’re standing in a moat right now. I mean, it’s your own moat. This is embarrassing for both of us, I should think.”

I composed a quick text message apprising him of the situation his non-dog doorbell had already told him about. I complimented the holiday decorations. It’s a classic white house, black shudders style, and they have really tasteful wreaths on the windows. Nicely done. You deserve compliments even after Epiphany, I think.

Anyway, I could not exit the neighborhood the way I went. So I had to turn around and race up the street, just in case he was on the porch, or in the drive. Or in the moat. I ducked down low, holding my cell phone up, with the camera acting as a periscope as I drove by because, please no eye contact, not now. None of this will look suspicious. None of that happened.

Except the part about having to drive right back by. That part definitely happened.

An hour or two later he returned my text. He’d had to run an errand which took longer than normal and nice job staying on the sidewalk.

Part of that text didn’t happen, either.

I went to the hardware store. I had two things on my list. Two! And this is where the day gets interesting.

Oh, now, 493 words in, now it gets interesting?

Hush, you. Just read the thing. Comments go below.

I walked up the stairs of the porch to the hardware store, because it is designed in that style.

“Riveting.”

Seriously.

Walked in, and at first glance it looked like they’d taken away the checkout island. That threw me right off. Now there’s a guy there, leaned all casual on a stack of whatever and we’re doing the eye contact thing and he is not in a moat, and now we must speak.

Some warm kinda day out there, I said, because it was that precise level of mild that, standing under the sun made you feel like it was a perfect temperature.

“Wait until you see tomorrow,” he said, “and the next day. I was going to go skiing, but not now.”

Sure does look like great weather ahead, I said, or something like that. I don’t know. I wasn’t taking notes. I agreed that forecast was surprisingly wonderful for early January, and what am I even doing here anyway?

(Update: What I am doing here is shaking an ancestral fist at the forecast algorithms. Nothing of what we’d been promised for days came to pass on Thursday, Friday, or Saturday. First it was cold. Then it turned gray, and also damp.)

I was there for two things. I wanted to stock up, perverse as it sounded with weather like this, on snow blower oil.

They did not have snow blower oil.

I wondered if all oil is the same? Sure, there are different weights of oil, owing to viscosity and their purpose, this part I know. But is there snow blower oil? Is that different than car oil? Does that suggest there are snow blower oil tankers? And car oil tankers? Are there snow blower oil fields somewhere? How far away are they from the car oil derricks?

So I wandered over two aisles to look for brad nails. The hardware store had two options for brad nails on their shelf. Neither of those two sizes will suffice for the intended project. (I did the math.)

So I left the first hardware store empty-handed.

(Told you this was the interesting part!)

I did the math twice because this means I’ll now have to go to a big box store. I’d much rather just go to a hardware store. But everyone’s needs are different to the point of exotic, and every store’s inventory space is finite.

Well, there’s one other ma’ and pa’ hardware store I can visit first. Its name hearkens back to a time when you went into town to pick up your order of coal and/or ice. The marquee out front, the last few times I passed by, proudly boasted of having Ivermectin in stock. Surely, they have the longer brad nails.

And, then, back home to the emails I can’t do anything about, and also the ones asking ‘Should we meet?’ And also the class prep. Most of today has been in that same vein. These are lost days, then. I’ve hit a bit of a wall, this week. I’m predicting a breakthrough tomorrow.

It’s interesting, how you can see motivation coming.

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1
Jan 26

Happy New Year

Poseidon, a cat of action, is ready for 2026. He’s been helping us put things away, like the Christmas dishes, which have been used since Thanksgiving, back in their place of honor in the heirloom china cabinet.

Phoebe, she’s more of a thinker, and she’s not at all sure about 2026.

We are now launching a campaign to try to convince them both that nothing of substance will change this year. They’ll get cuddles throughout the day. They’ll still be fed in the evenings. The squirrels and the birds and the rabbits will all be outside, just beyond their reach.

I wonder what their resolutions would be, if they made them.

Mine …

Patience | Thoughtfulness | Kindness | Productivity | Personal Peace | Happy Pursuits

Mine will be ridiculously challenging.

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25
Dec 25

Merry Happy Christmas

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11
Dec 25

That’s no space station

All of my online class feedback has been sent out to the various hard-working student groups. They’re making mock up plans for the social media accounts of local non-profit organizations. Some of the groups are in terrific shape. One or two have a little way to come, but there are still a few days, left, and there’s always the last minute miracle.

What I was looking at today and yesterday was the print version of their plans. The good ones are about 15-17 pages. One or two went a bit longer. A few were just under. I try to give some substantial feedback, best I can, given that I don’t know the operations they’re working on nearly as well as they do. Also, there’s some formulaic strategy in preparing such campaigns, but there’s also some art and subjectivity, too. Sometimes, the advice I can offer is about what you’ve missed. Or what you might miss if you aren’t prepared for it. Sometimes it feels like the Rumsefeld matrix, the unk-unks of the military industrial complext, the stuff you’d talk about in project management and strategic planning.

So I prattle on, hoping something in there can be useful to the groups that are diligent enough to read a few hundred words.

You’d be surprised.

I say that, because I am surprised, all the time.

Today the finals for my media criticism class were all turned in. Now I’ll be grading them. Tonight and tomorrow. On Monday, those social media finals will appear. On Tuesday, the finals from the org comm class will be waiting for my attention.

At some point, I have to work on next semester’s classes, too.

Anyway, this is the starscape from the back step just now. That’s Jupiter, right in the center of the photo.

That planet is some 402.7 million miles from us right now. That light took 36 minutes to get here. You could put 1,000 earths inside a hollow version of the gas giant.

I could tell you these stats all night long, but I’d still have work to do when I was done.