Tuesday

Covid-19 / cycling / photo / podcast / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on The usual much ado
12
May 20

The usual much ado

All of that sun on Sunday was so nice and lovely, but the passing shadows told the tale. When I stopped taking pictures of the birds it was because the sun had scooted beyond the houses and was focusing on something else. A chill took over from the sun. Because that’s going to be the natural conclusion of things around here in May. I went inside because I was shivering.

And yesterday, Monday, I went on a bike ride and shivered some more. It remains the second week of May and jackets are required.

It was a quick and short ride. Today, a short and slow run. First time out in a while, dashing off a casual little 5K:

Because if you asked me to actually work through a 5K right now I could only laugh at you.

We talked the performing arts! Dance! Theatre! Musicals! I mentioned a classic Italian and sounded learned:

Of course, it is a conversation with the chair of a high quality program, so we know who the real learned person was. These conversations are fun, but here soon, as the reopening begins, or continues, or begins to continue, we’ll have to start thinking about some of these are framed. Which is just as well. We’ve had about 15 of these sorts of episodes now and a little change of pace is called for.

Which is why it’s cold, and I’m shuffling on slow neighborhood runs. See? The pace, she changes.

I’m getting to the point where I could do for some change. Thursday will mark nine weeks at home. That’s a lot, and I’m a homebody. One mustn’t complain overmuch. We have our health, and the health of our loved ones. We are still working. And sure, we have missed out on some activities, but those are relative inconveniences. It is easy to get caught up on the personal inconveniences. It should be easier, still, to maintain one’s perspective. I read that story about cruise ship crews and I think of the few I’ve been on, and the gracious and kind people who spend their lives working hard and working long hours for small amounts of money to make sure people have a wonderful experience, and this is happening in their office. It’s a terrible thing. My office is all-but-closed and we’re working from home offices. And, if that gets too stuffy, I move to the living room, or the kitchen island, or the deck as I did one day, or the front porch as I did another day. So I’ll stay quiet about what I need. My chief complaint, then, is the weather, which is out there while I’m in here. What I can complain about is inconsequential at the moment.

I sat on the deck all afternoon Sunday, I had a bike ride yesterday, a run today, and tomorrow it will be cold again. I’ll have a Zoom meeting or two. We’ll read about something sad that has happened somewhere, and something sweet and endearing that took place elsewhere. I’ll probably watch something I have had in a queue for a while. It’ll be Wednesday. (Or so I’m told.) And it’s all downhill from there. Patience and grace.

photo / Tuesday — Comments Off on This weather
5
May 20

This weather

These are highly variable days, if the variation you seek is gray and damp and cold, then this is the time for you. The time for this, alas, is not May.

… 7, 8, 9, 10 …

There. All better now. Anyway, as I so often say, now apparently a full six months out of the year, Michigan has one job: Keep Canada in Canada.

And for six months of the year Michigan is lousy at its job.

For the record, the first snowfall this past year was on Halloween. I’m still running an electric blanket 186 days later just to knock down the chill in the bedroom at night. Such that, when my lovely bride retires to the bedroom before me she asks if I would like it if she turned on the blanket on my side of the bed. “No, but thank you,” I say. While thinking “It is, after all, May.”

And then I retire to the bedroom later, after working on this or that or typing away at this or that or just staring at the wall and discover it is cold bordering on silly in the bedroom and I go to sleep with the blanket on the third highest setting.

In, once again, May.

We said in March, “Ya know, if you have to stay at home and stay inside, at least this is the time of year to do it.” Sitting at home calculating the scant few hours of gray not-night probably would summon ill spirits. We lost out on the end of the school year, saying goodbye to a crop of students, and we’re losing spring because ‘Thanks, Michigan’ and a lot of the early long days because of the weather. And those senses of loss, big and small, will somehow compound upon themselves. These aren’t the really important things we’re losing, loses which will be a burr in the psyche for the entire age, I fear.

Forty degrees in May is plenty enough, thanks, is what I’m saying.

Not enough degrees. You know what I mean.

Anyway, we went on a walk, and I wore a jacket in May. Here are three photos.

It rained this morning:

And these raindrops are marching off to … somewhere else in the cycle of life, I’m sure. They’ll be absorbed by the plant and turned into something a blade will come along and cut down sooner or later.

Or an animal will come along and knock the droplets into the soil where it will eventually seep in ever smaller bits and drips until it joins the water table and follows the natural path to a nearby stream.

Or it will evaporate.

Do you think raindrops — the ones you assign personality to, I mean — have any thoughts on that when they’re up in the clouds? I bet it’s a lot of “I’m excited to see where I land this time!” It’d be better than worrying about it. “I’m going to land in a dog bowl again, I just know it.”

Sometimes I see a raindrop on a leaf or a flower and I wonder. It’s a childlike thing, I suppose. Intellectually, I know the whole system is basically devoted to capture, but when you see it like this the engineer in you has to wonder about efficiency.

There’s going to be more seasonal inappropriate wardrobe choices over much of the next two weeks. And then, of course, suddenly it will be summer.

photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on A walk through the woods
28
Apr 20

A walk through the woods

It was definitely a get-outside sort of day today. So I traipsed through the woods for lunch, and saw these young red-tailed hawks who were on the prowl:

Flowers I found down by the creek bed:

The trees are finally getting ready to speak their piece around here:

I’m still trying to figure this out …

… it’s a managed field surrounded by woods that’s out of immediate use and there’s that old tree just waiting. I am pretty sure I am on someone’s prop —

I am from the South, as I feel compelled to remind people all the time. So that sort of thing isn’t odd to me at all. Someone was burning things and they sat out there to monitor the fire.

But I have also read a lot of the Southern Gothics, and this little setting just off to the side was a bit more unnerving:

When authors write about the trees and hills, this is the sort of thing many of them have in mind, I am sure of it:

And just a small batch of pretty wildflowers I saw on my walk:

On the way back inside, the geese:

photo / Tuesday / video — Comments Off on Nice day out; try it while you can
21
Apr 20

Nice day out; try it while you can

It was a lovely spring day. We’ll have more gross and cold weather soon, because these damp, gray, Canadian conditions can’t pick their spots. Hey, we’ll worry about that on another day. Like tomorrow! And portions of next week! And possibly a substantial portion of May!

Anyway, here are a few pictures of blooming trees from just down the street.

It was a walk, you see, taking in the lovely aspects of a fine Tuesday.

This was not the turnaround point, but it could have been.

And this is a dandelion in the front yard. It’s coming along rather nicely in the bed with three differing layers of anti-weed material placed with the intention of preventing such a thing:

The dandelion is growing in the shadow of these shrubs, which provide us with today’s Video That Has Nothing To Do With The Day:

Listening to birds singing is just lovely. And, for a moment, the wind was a nice addition and there were no kids or the far off beep beep beeping of trucks backing up or any of the other things that happen in a hopping neighborhood. It was a fine day to sit in the shade and listen.

IU / journalism / memories / photo / podcast / Tuesday — Comments Off on A podcast, a random memory and three photos
14
Apr 20

A podcast, a random memory and three photos

From time to time I am put in mind of my first real camera. I was in undergrad. I was about to start the photojournalism work at the campus newspaper. Soon after would come the photography classes and so on. It was Christmas time and there must have been a really nice deal on Canons that year. I remember being at family haunts and taking those first pictures, really just trying to figure the thing out. It was a step up from the old 110s, to be sure, and what even is an aperture, anyway?

It was that phase of learning how to take pictures. There’s a certain tree, a certain outbuilding. This and that. And you think, That’s going to be a great photograph. Then you send the film off to be developed, or go to the darkroom to do your work, because wow I’m old. And then the prints come back and they are very average. Because you’re just trying to figure the camera out still, really, and it’s a nice and important element of family life and important to you, but that’s where it begins and ends and that’s really enough.

Then you go out and you take pictures of a random dead tree that grew out and above the rest of the tree line before just giving up entirely. And you think, That’s going to be a great photograph. But it isn’t. Because not all of them are great. Some days most aren’t even good.

You just need a few of those, really. If you ask for more you just look greedy.

Which is clearly what I was not on this walk, from a few more of the found photographs from last month.

I’m sure I thought to myself This trail is going to look amazing in this photograph, and I’ll remember this thought verbatim as a construct for a future photo essay on recall and subpar photography!

You can see why I was excited about that:

And! Look! A stream!

It is cold. It was cold then and it is cold now. Only two weeks have passed and while two kids were playing in it that a little further down, there wasn’t a line to get in there and give it a try. Maybe next month.

I talked with Tom Duzynski. He’s the Epidemiology Education Director at the Fairbanks School of Public Health at IUPUI in Indianapolis, Indiana, and basically a rock star. He talked about how it looks like stay at home practices and quarantine practices are working, how long it might be until we can start returning to more normal activities and what experts are continually learning about Covid-19.

I was promised audiograms, but those haven’t appeared yet. So I made my own, sorta, from the above conversation just to see what that’d be like. It’s getting some nice play, too:

I think the next person I’ll talk to will also be an epidemiologist. Let’s see if we can get them to disagree!

Actually, we won’t. It isn’t that kind of show.

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