We were standing in a viewing room in this fancy Texas funeral home. Fanciest one you’ve ever been to, probably. My mother and stepfather had let the grandchildren in. There are four of us. I was the step-grandchild and the oldest and whatever else I was and I was standing back there behind the grandkids as they looked at their grandmother. I watched them thinking whatever they thought as our folks left the room and after a while I finally said this thing that I’d been thinking about all day.
The thing I’ve learned in the last few years is that the thing about grandmothers, or any person that has that much importance in your life, is that no matter what has happened or what will happen or what you might imagine for yourself later, they are still there. She’s still around you and with you. The things she tried to teach you and the good times she showed you and the lessons she really hoped you’d learn, they’re all still there. She’s always still going to be with you as an influence and a guide. That’s the great thing about the people that are important to you. They always stay with you. There comes a time, in your own time, when that occurs to you. And that is a really, really, really comforting thought.
It had come to me just today. It had taken me almost two-and-a-half years to figure that out and I think I needed to hear it as much as I wanted to say it.
Two of my grandmothers. (The way my family tree works I’ve had a handful of amazing grandmothers and great-grandmothers.) Dortha, my step-grandmother, is on the left. Bonnie, my mother’s mother who remains one of the most important people in my life, and impacts all of my big decisions, even still, is on the right. This was taken on a trip they made with my folks to the Butchart Gardens in Canada in 2014.
Woke up to snow. Watched it, off and on, fall all day. Little flakes, big flakes, sticky flakes. Here’s some shots from the office:
Classes start back next Monday. People are starting to trickle back into the building, the ones that aren’t sick with something anyway. There’s a lot of that going around, which has been the case since before Thanksgiving. This is a new old building, one side of which you see at the beginning of the video, but it might be out to get us, in a biological sense.
But the snow! Isn’t it lovely! Tonight it will actually get cold. Tomorrow we’ll be between 0 and 5 degrees and wearing heavy jackets. But, today, the snow is full of that magic that wipes away doubt and impossibility and dirt and the decay of autumn. Tomorrow, or the next day, the snow will be its own doubt and dirt.
I canceled my XM subscription today. Two representatives tried very hard to upgrade me or reduce my bill or extend me this or offer me that. But I just don’t spend that much time in the car right now and the reception to their transponders is blocked on about 20 percent of my route. The quality has been in decline ever since the Sirius-XM merger, while the price has almost doubled.
I really only listened to the 40s station anyway.
We’re watching West Wing, about 15 years too late.
I feel like, after tonight’s episodes, that we might have already watched the best part of the show. But last night we were here:
Tonight we got here:
And I think I see what everyone likes about the Charlie character. He’s not a bad character, but I think this is about first impressions — and binge watching. When you met him he was that young kid, who thought he was there to be a messenger. And then you learned his backstory, which was heartbreaking and then he was frozen in amber. He’s a humble sort, but never in over his head. And so he became the precocious child of the show, even as a young adult.
It probably hurt him, then, that he’s in a room surrounded by talented, accomplished people and has a paternalistic lead. Now, it is supposed to be four years later. But, really, for us, it has been just a few months. He’s still that boy, still precocious, which isn’t fair to the character. He’s not a boy, we haven’t allowed for that evolution with time.
Some things about binge watching are antithetical to character evolution.
Would you rather we discussed books?
If you like sports, or baseball, or books about sports, or just good research and writing, I’d suggest Bottom of the 33rd. It is about the longest game in the history of organized baseball, a Triple-A struggle in Massachusetts in 1981.
It featured Easter, 40-degree temperatures, Wade Boggs, Cal Ripken Jr., Bruce Hurst and maybe the best hitter you’ve never heard of. The book covers two clubs, owners, communities, broadcasters, managers … it is difficult to imagine how did not get included, so complete is the research.
The writing is incredibly crisp. I don’t read a lot of sports books, but this was written by a New York Times columnist and it shows in his love of the craft.
I’m also about halfway through The Adventure of English. This is the companion book to a BBC series on the language, told as a biography, almost of a living person.
It’s a slog, but its a good read. You have to really want it, I think, really appreciate the power of language to find this book interesting. It’s poetic in places, and it is as dense as a technical manual in others. Halfway through, though, and Shakespeare just retired and the study of the language has moved to the Pilgrims, landing months late and at the wrong spot, and the meeting, either by “chance or through God’s providence,” with Squanto.
Tisquantum, you might recall, helped the pillaging Pilgrims survive that first harsh winter. He was perhaps the only English-speaking native for hundreds of miles around, and arguably the most fluent English speaker on the continent. How fortunate for them that he was in the next village from where they came ashore. Now, the book is moving into the American Colonial period. I just learned that of the 13 colonies only two were derived from native terms. Connecticut, for example, stems from Quinnehtukqut, which the Internet tells me means “beside the long tidal river.”
I think the best part of the book is that, while it is talking about the power of the language to evolve, it stops in 2011. So some of these words from the 2011 additions to the OED may be in there, but surely not all of them, surely not the word “posilutely.”
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We have two fuzzy throw blankets, a white one and a brown one. They are identical, except for the color. They were gifts from my mother-in-law. I can’t tell you, without a video demonstration, the absolute lengths Allie will go to avoid these blankets to get to a hooman or otherwise just move around on the sofa.
But let it get a little chilly …
And this is how I measure temperature these days: Is the cat covered up?
The sports guys did two sports shows tonight. This is the last one, The Toss Up, a show they launched just this term:
And so this is the last production in the brand new studio, which opened just this semester, in September, actually.
We’re learning where all the lights point and how the buttons work. It’s a fine place and we’re very pleased. It’s a really nice studio, a great classroom and a terrific jewel in the Media School’s crown.
The students are pretty good too, if you like sports talk shows.
You can watch it here:
It felt like 12-degrees today. I ran to work in that. I ran to work. (I do not know what is happening.) It flurried on me.
Last Friday it felt like 31 when I rode my bike to campus. I’m no longer going outside.
