Thursday

photo / Thursday / Twitter — Comments Off on Questions of a different kind of distance
4
Feb 21

Questions of a different kind of distance

I helped moved a few things from one room to another room today. And, when we were done with that we all sat down, carefully distanced — because we are conscientious about this sort of thing, except for the one guy, who, look, I happened to have a tape measure on me at the time and I ran out several feet of tape and pointed this out and I know you to be a smart individual, step back — and properly masked and all of the usual things, because we’re almost a year into the routine of it, now. Except the one guy, I guess.

Oh, if he were the only one, right? But there’s always the one person, in any walk of life, in any scenario you might think up. Parties, the game, the store, in a social distancing context, there’s always that one individual. And I chant “patience and grace” to myself, and, these days, I’m grateful the mask covers 64 percent of my facial expression.

Anyway, he left, and there’s no point to his presence in this story, or to the story, really. But he went about his day and we all sat down to chat and I sat on a chair that had this sticker on it.

Because, eventually, we all take turns being that guy.

I remember covering a hurricane once where the pre-landfall story of dubious origin was that the authorities were patrolling the areas under evacuation orders and handing out toe tags to anyone that had stuck around. The point being, that there’s a certain type of personality that doesn’t take a hurricane seriously. So, maybe this comparison won’t stand out the way the expert would have hoped. At some point, you get it or you won’t get it. Eleven months in, I’d argue, we’re well past that point. Nevertheless:

The first thing about this is, Well, that was obvious and apparent as a potential problem. The second part is, the sample size is, obviously, demographically skewed. So this is what you’ve have to work from as an observer.

Take this incredible woman’s story, for example.

The third, and equally important thing is, this won’t get better as we slide down the age scale.

What if we brought in the people from Chick-fil-A, Amazon, the IRS and each community’s most successful delivery start up and start a super group?

Don’t you just love when your brain seizes on a bit of history?

I spent some time looking through the online records. Mr. Hall was a man of some achievement and professional notoriety. As always, you’re getting the thinnest of outline notes in newspaper form. But what I’ve learned leaves a lot of interesting questions that you’d like to have answered these many decades hence.

So if anyone knows their grandchildren or great-grandchildren … send them my way for a quick conversation.

bespoke / cycling / Thursday — Comments Off on Two high-water marks
28
Jan 21

Two high-water marks

I got in a 26-mile bike ride on Zwift this evening. The first little bit of it was a VO2 max workout. That’s about your oxygen consumption in an exercise of incrementally intensity. As it turns out, the last vestige of any athletic ability I ever possessed can be found in my fairly decent VO2, and so this exercise was more fun than hard. Five four minute intervals at 225 watts. Look at those pretty, even, graphics.

But that was just an hour, and so I decided to ride some more. I did two laps of this course:

And that’s how I spent about 90 minutes, looking out at the melting snow in the diminishing light. We had 11 hours and two minutes of daylight today, Nautical twilight was at 7:04 p.m. and tomorrow will be almost two minutes longer. One of the real treats here, the increasing length of days.

This summer I’ll be able to stand in the yard and see a still-light blue sky at 9:30 at night. And summer can never get here fast enough or stay long enough, in part, because of that.

I finished up my DIY pocket squares. This is the final batch of seven. I probably won’t use all of these, those floral prints are a bit much, but they came in the mini-batch with the purples, which seemed like a color to have on hand. The days are getting longer. Spring pastels will be out soon, after all. (So that’s how the stay-at-home has been treating me. Why do you ask?)

So I counted and now I have … a lot of these things. But my jackets will look sharp, so I’ll have that going for me.

adventures / photo / Thursday / Twitter — Comments Off on Leave it
21
Jan 21

Leave it

On our walk late this afternoon, when it was unseasonably warm, you could hear it before you could see it. There was a breeze blowing and cars whirring by and it was all punctuated by our conversation but there was a crinkling, crunchy dispute of it all.

We’d already seen one driver, breaking the state’s hands free law, almost rear-end a pickup. We were making our turns based on maximizing the weak winter sun. We were talking about trips we couldn’t take when the dry parchment sound set upon the ears. Those dry, plaintive leaves, still hanging on in defiance, rustling in the wind.

It’s funny, the idea of trips. We had three scheduled last year that were canceled, plus probably three holiday visits. I don’t think I’ve been anywhere since Christmas of 2019. I mean anywhere farther than I’ve pedaled my bicycle. The Yankee has made a few trips to make appointments in Indianapolis, and that’s it for both of us. The curiosity of a staycation has been satisfied, and continues on. We, like the leaves, are still hanging on. But, lately, I’ve spent idle time planning other interesting trips that one might do. These don’t rise to the level of let’s make plans, but, rather ‘Wouldn’t that be neat?’ My favorite one was a four or five day bike-riding trip through New York … or a vacation home that’s both far away from everywhere, and yet easy to reach, and warm … or a B&B somewhere quiet. Crinkly, crunchy leaves would be required.

There’s another cold snap coming this weekend, and maybe some snow and ice, so a few more of those leaves may fall away before we find ourselves there again sometime next week. And while it is too early to think this way, in just 11 long weeks or so, those proud leaves will be replaced by a new generation of green sunlight collectors, and we can pretend like some of this never happened. But only some of it.

adventures / photo / Thursday — Comments Off on I rewrote the last sentence three times
14
Jan 21

I rewrote the last sentence three times

By the third try I’d cleaned up the tone, made it more concise and got to the heart of a truism.

It was sunny today. Sunny and cold. We’ll take it.

We celebrated with a walk. We have a nice three-mile circle we’ve developed where we lately figure out the solutions to life’s mysteries, make plans, figure out some research thing or run into a colleague.

Snow is in the forecast through the long weekend. Maybe we’ll see this big beautiful glowing orb by the middle of next week.

Also got in a quick 20-mile training ride this evening. I feel so very trained, having learned all about heart rate and cadence, which is odd since I wasn’t wearing a heart rate monitor and I don’t have a cadence sensor on my bike right now. Basically, I learned about cadence on a flat course. So I didn’t learn much of anything. But I got in a nice hour on the bike out of the deal. Take advantage of doing things you enjoy.

books / history / links / music / Thursday / Twitter / video — Comments Off on Sing and sing and sing and sing
7
Jan 21

Sing and sing and sing and sing

I finished reading Jon Meacham’s Songs of America. Yes, Tim McGraw is listed as a co-author. He did contribute some sidebars. They were included in the book. For the most part it wasn’t clear why. Meacham doesn’t need the help with history, and maybe twice McGraw contributed something to our understanding of the music. (And he’s certainly capable of doing that, but it didn’t really pay off here.

It was a lot more like the guy at the next table over just offering his opinion on a song you just played him. Maybe he knows it well. Maybe it sparks a memory from long ago. Maybe he’s hearing it for the first time. And he figures, well, since you’re talking about it and played it for him, he should probably offer a paragraph or two of thoughts on the matter.

And that’s what Tim McGraw did. I wondered how this arrangement came to be. It’s Jon Meacham. Which kinda diminishes McGraw, who has three Grammy wins and 17 other nominations among his other honors. He knows music, this is not a matter of dispute. He’s apparently written five other books, and one of those was a bestseller. But here, why was he here if a few sidebars was all he was going to contribute.

And then, at the end, they mention it. They are neighbors.

Anyway, it was an interesting book. You’re going to learn about songs you know. You’re going to discover important songs you haven’t even heard of before. Here are two little excerpts, from Meacham.

Susan B. Anthony had gone down to vote in the 1872 Grant-Greeley election. She was arrested and taken before a federal judge. The judge asked her if she had anything to say after her conviction for … voting.

Ward Hunt was on the U.S. Supreme Court. History doesn’t remember him especially well. He didn’t let her testify, read aloud his pre-written opinion, told the jury how to vote and immediately overturned motions for appeals. Anthony was charged with a fine. She told the judge she would never pay. She never did. Probably you’ve never heard of Judge. Hunt. Everyone learns about Susan B. Anthony, even if only a bit, in grade school.

Just go ahead and play this video while you read the text in next image.

In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution refused Marian Anderson’s participation in a concert at Constitution Hall under a “white performers-only” policy. Ultimately, a lot of DAR members left the organization, including Eleanor Roosevelt who would get the ball rolling for this Easter concert in front of the Lincoln Memorial. The contralto was in full force, a global star. No one knows how many thousands or millions listened on the radio, but one of the estimated 75,000 there in person was said to be 10-year-old Martin Luther King. (I’ve seen one reference on this, but I am struggling to find more.) He’d speak in front of Lincoln 24 years later, of course. She sang from the same spot that day, too.

Senator Mike Braun is from Indiana, and I have a question for him and the others who found themselves in this rickety position this week regarding the cynical political pandering of which he was a part. This was his message last week, and for quite some time:

And then yesterday happened — prior to which he was face-to-face with people in a way that rarely happens and he formalized his Arizona objection — but after the deadly assault, he wrote this:

So, senator, do us all a favor and explain this. You were certain, prior to the seditious raid on the U.S. Capitol, that this objection was something that needed to be done. Now, not at all. You withdrew your objection to the formal vote certification. So which is it, senator? Did you feel the wind change? Or are you that easily persuadable?

And which, in your estimation, is a better attribute for a United States senator?

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