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Tuesday

Revolutionary canvas and defying physics

On the loading dock today was this large canvas roller. These things intrigue me to no end, even as I know I will likely never have a real use for them myself. But that’s the way of it. Great logo, too:

Dandux is a product of C.R. Daniels, Inc. That company started out in New York City, but was purchased by the Trumpbour brothers soon after, in 1920. They moved to New Jersey, and now also have two custom facilities in Tennessee and Maryland, where this particular roller was produced. The second generation Trumpbour men at Daniels have passed away in recent years and you can find their obits online. They both had military service, which continues a long tradition in their family. Apparently eight of their Trumpbour ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War.

Favorite tidbit, Edward Trumpbour Jr. did not suffer mediocrity, “or as he would say ‘Meatballs.'”

Let’s find out about those 18th century Trumpbours … seems they were of Dutch descent. And at least some of them were enlisted in New York’s Ulster regiments as Tories. Two of the men from that era died in Canada in the 1800s, which is where a lot of Loyalists found themselves during and after the Revolution. Maybe we’re too far removed, in the sense of family history, to talk about the brother-against-brother aspect of that war, but here, it seems, we might have an example of it.

Anyway, their great-great-great-and-so-on grandchildren are still here.

We rode our bikes, where I thought nothing of Trumpbours or ducks or canvas or any other thing. If you chase fast people like The Yankee you don’t have time to think:

I took a bunch of pictures of her on this stretch of the bike ride, one of the few places I could pull alongside. But she kept outrunning my focus, which was weird. She wasn’t approaching the speed of light, but she was somehow defeating it nevertheless.

I did improve on a half-mile climb by four seconds. The cycling app says I presently have the third-fastest time up that climb for the year, which can only mean that most people don’t ride all the way down to the boat ramp and then back up. There’s no way my pitifully slow time should be on a leaderboard.

IU / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
19
Jul 16

On campus

I do not always understand art. Seldom, do I understand art, more probably. I’ve come to enjoy one explanation of art, even as I now only paraphrase it and can’t properly attribute it. Art, said the forgotten-by-me sage, is intended to be transportive, to take you away from your world and into another.

Or some such thing like that. It is a nice idea. And so, when I see this on the IU campus I think I have been placed inside a giant Hot Wheels track:

Here’s the door and sign of the old building. The Media School will be moving out of there in a few days:

And here’s Franklin Hall, the new building. It was built in 1907, has been a library and an administrative building, and is now coming out of a three-year, $21 million renovation. That’s where the Media School is moving to:

My office is around back from there. But much more impressive, inside, is the main atrium, which is dominated by a 26-foot by 12-foot by 4-inches thick screen with six Directv tuners. You can do presentations via computers and play video games on this guy, too:

Opposite that main entrance above is the Jordan River. (They really should call it a creek, but when in Rome … )

This little creek runs around my office, which sits on one of the building’s back corners:

food / IU / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
5
Jul 16

First day at the new job

Had to happen eventually, going back to work, I mean. We have everything unpacked and most things are settled. Except for the hanging of picture frames. We might need some help with that, so come on up.

Anyway, reported for duty today. This is the new building:

I’ve been reading Ernie Pyle for years. As best I can tell I first mentioned him on this site 10 years ago. And some long time before that I first read his columns. He was an incredible rider, and he’s from Indiana and attended the university. He’d come back home from time to time to see his family and friends. He’d come to campus once in a while, too. And he’s still beloved here. His desk is here, this building is named after him. He has a statue that was installed in recent years, and that’s over at the location of the new building. I’m sure we’ll get around to explaining all of that here in time. For now, I’m at Ernie Pyle Hall, who could have seen that coming? Soon, we’ll be in a newly renovated facility. Pretty fancy upgrades all the way around.

This is a small part of the student union. They say its one of the largest in the country. They have a bowling alley and a barber shop and a bakery inside. Also, no kidding, a hotel:

This will take some explaining. Friends took us to this restaurant when we were up here at the first of the year. On a lark I tried a sort of burger I wouldn’t ordinarily order. It was delicious. We came back tonight for the first time, but they’d taken it off the menu. Didn’t sell. (Because I hadn’t gotten here yet, I guess.) I was so stunned and saddened that it took me even longer to think up a backup order, much to the delight and consternation of The Yankee and a friend of ours who was up visiting some family. I finally settled on this James Beard Foundation prize winning burger. It was OK, but not as good as what I wanted.

Now, the waiter, this poor guy who had to deal with me, he got the chef to give him the recipe for the mythical Cuban Frita burger:

Going to have to try to make that soon.

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28
Jun 16

My app says I rode my bike 90 mph today (I didn’t)

We found a spooky barn on our bike ride today. How often do you see a barn like this?

That’s probably a little over halfway along in today’s 30-mile route. It was at the top of a long slow climb. You get up there and before you can catch your breath you are wondering about the people that lived there. House on one side of the road, two little barns on this side, all right at the top of a round hill.

Which is better than being at the bottom of the hill, but you go through there thinking, Man, mechanized automobiles are great. Isn’t it great we didn’t have to haul these materials up here by hand?

Or that’s what I’d think, anyway.

Coneflowers we found somewhere else along the way:

We stopped four times on our ride today. And that’s OK. Great day for it. Everything is growing and in the full splendor of summer. It is a sight. You want to see it all, and hold it, and then find a way to keep it for forever, because you know the season and the beauty won’t last forever. But it should. Even when it shouldn’t, it should, even when you know why it can’t.

It’s not yet July, you shouldn’t be thinking about the winter.

I thought I would take a picture of my bicycle tire:

Seemed like a good idea at the time. I’d just mounted the thing, after all. Now I need to swap the other one, so the wheel doesn’t feel bad.

adventures / Alabama / family / Indiana / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
21
Jun 16

At the summer solstice

The sun is big and warm and that’s just about right. Daylight comes a bit later here, since we moved, but it is still bright over dinner, and we eat late. If only it stayed like this all year around.

It seems I can’t even mow the wildflowers in the side yard, reaching up and out as they are. I am presently cutting around them.

But it is nice and warm, but not overly so. The trees are nice and green and the grass is bright. You can hear the stream babbling nearby, if there’s no noise and you get close enough you can sometimes hear it before you see it. And, for the first time in as long as I can remember, you can’t really hear any road traffic.

There are roads, of course, and there are hills. We are going up and down them. Slowly, really. We’ve been out to discover a few new restaurants, mostly when we didn’t want to cook, and met a few nice people, most of them from our new bike group.

They meet twice a week in the evenings in a church parking lot near us. And we’ve been following them around, sometimes wishing they’d go faster and sometimes wishing they’d go slower. This is the first time I’ve ever ridden in a group and it is an adjustment. But we’re learning some roads.

Otherwise, we’ve just been unpacking and resting up from the move and learning the new house and recovering from the old house. There was much to paint and move and then the professional movers, five guys out of central casting, came and packed the rest and loaded it and hauled it all away. A few days later the physical evidence of our lives caught up to us. Even the parts we thought we were staying on top of caught up with us eventually. And I’m not talking about the painting, which we’d also hired out to the professionals.

Eventually, I’m sure, everything will start to feel normal again, whatever that is. Probably after all of the boxes and wrapping paper are gone and I can find things in the kitchen again and know what light switch controls what in the new place. Everything will be normal again after that. I wonder when it started being unusual before all of that. Longer than I’d imagine, I bet.

So this is an usual quarterly report, but a proper one. We wrapped up one life and are getting ready to start a new one. So the solstice is a good time for this. Do you know where the word comes from? It’s Latin. Sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still). Nothing stands still. It is just a question of which direction you want to go.