Wednesday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Wednesday

This gives me an idea, two of them, and one of them may be fun

I went for a neighborhood run. Of my own accord. Let me regale you with the details for 700 words.

No. It wasn’t that long of a run. Here is a 350 word passage.

I need to run more, but it is possible I like running less than I have in a long time. I blame time. Time is going to get a lot of blame in the near future. So, I put on the running apparel and the running shoes, and I went outside. Normally, for whatever reason, I turn right out of the driveway and run around the neighborhood in a clockwise fashion. But today, I turned left. This put me on an immediate uphill, which is probably the reason I normally turn right. When I got near the top of that very tiny hill I turned right again, so that I might turn right one more time and run down a cul-de-sac I’d never seen. Just adding a few extra hundred yards on a nice road, and then back to my main route, continuing the loop around the neighborhood. This was a mile-and-a-quarter, a good distance for a sprinting horse, or a jogging me. Let all of them see my athleticism! I go back and forth, when I run, thinking I should do this more so I can get marginally faster at it, just in case something marginally slower than me ever chases me in the most comical sequence nature has ever devised. But then I think, things sometimes hurt too much for that, anyway. Again, I blame time. Also, I have a bike. And a car. And locks on the house. And what’s going to chase me? But, maybe, if I ran a bit more, I wouldn’t notice an ankle ache because of a knee pain. That could be an upgrade? Also, sometimes we go for runs, and wouldn’t it be nice for that to be a pleasant experience, or something approaching almost, you know, acceptable, rather than something you gut out? And that’s my goal now, right now, to run enough to make it not something you have to grit your teeth through. And, also, to recover all of the speed, such as it was, that I enjoyed in my teens. Who do I see about making those arrangements?

Just wait until you see my next run.

I know you’re as invested in the fig tree’s progress as I am. Behold, today’s view of the fig tree!

We’ll be googling Fig Newton recipes in no time.

The hydrangea really work well here. These things will just show off for months.

I had to bring the aloe plant back inside. Being a succulent, it does not tolerate chilly temperatures and, being stupid, we’ve had temperatures in the 40s and 50s the last several nights, the plant was turning a tiny bit yellow. Fortunately I noticed it early. It should be fine.

Considering we are now well in the middle of April, it should be warm enough for everything to be outside by now, but what can you do? I mean, aside from lighting up the atmosphere and hoping for no abnormal frosts as May draws near?

Let us turn, once more, to We Learn Wednesdays, where we learn all about this county via it’s historical markers and bike rides. You see a lot more at the speed of two pedals, and today’s marker is the perfect example. This is the 32st installment and the 53rd marker in the effort. I learned, a month or two ago, that this one was out there somewhere. But in my mind it was elsewhere on this same road. So imagine my surprise when I saw it yesterday.

I’ve passed it several times in my automobile — OK, usually at night — and had no idea. I’ve also passed it several times on my bicycle. Some things you just have to be looking for, even if you aren’t aware of it at the time. And I was only aware of this because of a nearby town crier. (We have a town crier nearby, how great is that?)

Jim Cook Jr, the crier, tells us that Christian Piercy was trying to flee the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793. He got out of Philadelphia, hoping to find some refuge for his family, but he started showing symptoms on the stagecoach. So they kicked him off. He turned to the strangers around him for help, but everyone was terrified of the illness. One man took him in. He put him in a barn — or a humble log cabin, depending on the version you hear, and Piercy died soon after.

Piercy had risen to the rank of major in the Philadelphia militia. The militia in that state was an organizational mess:

Pennsylvania had two major shifts in government during the war, and also major changes in the types of militia forces that defended the home front.[1] The shifts in government were actually instigated by the militia, and so they also dramatically impacted the militia system, besides profoundly upsetting the population.

And, what’s more, not everyone wanted to serve, and we don’t just mean the Quakers, Mennonites and other pacifists. That same article tells us that substitutes made up about 42 percent of the total militia force between 1777 and 1780. But Piercy answered the call in the summer of 1777, just after the Pennsylvania’s first-ever Militia Law required mandatory enrollment of all white men between the ages of 18 and 53. Two of his brothers also mustered.

He was apparently wounded, says a modern descendant in an ancestry forum, in a rearguard action about 20 miles outside of the capitol, in a September 1777 rout of the American forces. Our man served and suffered at Valley Forge that next winter, and stayed in the militia after the war, until 1789. It is difficult to tell, from here, what else he did during his time in uniform. Some of the Pennsylvania militia were serving as home guard, others were ordered to battle.

In 2020 Piercy got a brief mention in The Atlantic, which notes that he died alone in that cabin, almost immediately after he arrived. He showed up that same year in a Washington Post story. (Ahh, 2020, when everyone was drawing parallels.)

Piercy was of German descent, and he and his family were part of a proud and longstanding Philadelphia tradition of cutting edge pottery. He lived right on the river, and his shop was nearby, as well. Just a few years ago, local businesses were still discovering some of his works hidden in their collections.

In July 1788, he helped led a group of potters in the Grand Federal Procession in Philadelphia.

Three hours long and a mile-and-a-half in length, the Grand Federal Procession was an ambitious act of political street theater, scripted by federalist supporters of the newly ratified U.S. Constitution and performed in the streets of Philadelphia on the Fourth of July 1788. From its commencement at Third and South Streets to its conclusion on Bush Hill north of the city center, the procession involved an estimated 22,000 Philadelphians: 5,000 men in the parade, with a vastly more diverse crowd of 17,000 men, women, and children watching from streets and windows, fences and roofs. Organized by rank and occupation, the marchers were roughly divided between federalist gentlemen (bankers, merchants, members of the Marine and Manufacturing Associations) and thousands of artisan-mechanics who, as the city’s producing class, were central to the ideology of federalism.

That’s a big parade.

There was a brilliant description of the entire order of march in the 1930s.

A flag, on which was neatly painted a kiln burning, and several men at work in the different branches of the business — Motto — “The Potter hath Power over his Clay.”

A four wheel’d carriage drawn by two horses, on which was a Potter’s wheel and men at work, a number of cups,- bowls, mugs, & c. were made during the procession; the carriage was followed by twenty potters, headed by Mess. Christian Piercy and Michael Gilbert, wearing linen aprons of American manufacture.

In the line just in front of Piercy and the potters were the Whip and Cane Manufacturers, “Let us encourage our own manufactures,” the Black-smiths, White-smiths and Nailers, “By Hammer in hand, all Arts do stand,” and the coach-makers, “The Clouds dispell’d, we shine forth.” All of these people were working on the floats as they came by for spectators to see. Behind the men making their pottery on the move came the Wheel-wrights, with five men working on a plow and wheel ahead of 22 of their colleagues, a dozen tin-plate workers, and then the skinners, breeches makers and glovers, 61 strong, under a flag that said “May our Manufacture be equal in its Consumption to its usefulness.” Then came the tallow chandlers, with the mottos “Let your light so shine,”
“The Stars of America a light to the World,” and “United in One.” Twenty of them came through, each with an olive branch in hand.

Street theater is a good name for it.

That was 1788. He died in 1793. Hopefully it was a life of peace and clay in between.

They buried him right away, presumably as a contagion or logistical concern. His wife survived him, and she had the marker put in place. It’s on private farmland, and I didn’t feel it was proper to walk up there, but if you just look in the distance, on the left side of this photo, there’s a flag fluttering in the breeze. That’s where Piercy was buried.

He was just 49 years old.

We’ll see another great marker next week, I’m sure. I just have to go hunt them out between now and then. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

That’s enough for now. Tomorrow, we’ll check back in on the happenings in the greenhouse, see another cool video and maybe more! See you then!

California / photo / running / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
10
Apr 24

I must be running to something

We started a community-driven 5k series this evening. This required running a 5K. Just right out of the gate, first night of the series, they expect you to run.

Well I’ve got news for them. This was my fifth run of the entire calendar year (and one of those other four was with a suitcase and backpack in tow) and it looked like it. Critically, it felt like it.

The good news is that there are three or four more events in the series during which I can redeem myself and shave a good, solid, 15 seconds off the incredible slow time I offered tonight. But, hey, at least it hurt a lot!

The problem — as ever with running — is that I don’t enjoy it to the degree that I want to do it enough to get back to aging-guy-average. But that’s what it will take to challenge the guy who’s 20 years my junior and making it look easy. This problem isn’t going to solve itself, I suppose.

These sorts of problems often don’t.

It occurs to me that the easiest way to solve that problem is to simply steal that guy’s sneakers.

Here’s another look at the blooms on the lovely purple-leaf sand cherry (prunus x cistena). Enjoy them before they are going.

We really should be engineering a bush or tree that flowers throughout the growing season. Do we have those already? A lab should make them if not. I would have them installed as borders surrounding the property, so that they could be admired from every vantage point.

More signs of life. This is going to go from a pile of sticks to a hydrangea in about the same amount of time it took for me to run 5 kilometers.

Those things really are remarkable. Hard rains and heat and then more hard rains got to them last year. But they just keep growing merrily along. This year we may even prune them on time.

This is our last video from California.

I’m just kidding, there’s still at least a week of nice stuff to work through. But this is the last of the big views.

This is the Bixby Bridge, built in 1932, and the northernmost part of our trip.

Before this bridge was built, Big Sur residents were particularly isolated in the winter. The Old Coast Road a dozen miles away was often closed. This bridge, the longest concrete arch span in the state and, at the time, the highest single-span in the world, came in under budget.

How did they build this bridge in the 1930s? Aliens. But how did those 1930s aliens do it?

Construction took 15 months, beating the two-lane highway, itself an 18-year project, by a half decade. More than 300,000 board feet of Douglas fir timber was used to support the arch during construction. It took two months to construct the falsework alone.

They excavated 4,700 cubic yards of earth and rock and more than 300 tons of reinforcing steel were shipped in by train and narrow one-lane roads. They chose cement because it looked better and was more durable in the elements. That decision required 45,000 sacks of cement, zipped across the river canyon on cable and slings.

The arch ribs are five feet thick at the deck and nine feet thick where they join the towers at their base. The arches are four and one-half feet wide.

In our next videos, we’ll see some more aquatic creatures. It’ll be beautiful, great fun. Come back tomorrow to check it out.

And if anybody complains about their running sneakers disappearing, I have a perfectly sound alibi.

California / history / markers / New Jersey / photo / video / We Learn Wednesdays / Wednesday — Comments Off
3
Apr 24

Mediated transference

There is a time in preparing every good presentation when you have the thing well in hand. You’ve practiced it and studied the timing. You’ve considered every angle worth considering, and discard a few that were, honestly, not worth the neurological effort. And so you put it aside.

That’s where I was earlier today, and then some other ideas came to mind.

And those other ideas? When they come in, they are the worst, especially if they’re the best. This is surely why some people throw slide decks together. Better to mumble and stumble through these things, reading text as you go, than be burdened by ideas late in the cycle.

But the presentation I am presenting tomorrow must be presented with some clarity and efficiency and interest. So there is practice and re-practice and new ideas. Always the new ideas. And somewhere in the third or fourth round of practice you get the best version of the presentation.

No one but the cat and my office walls heard that version.

If there was a hall of fame for rhetorical flourish and pithy points uttered to an empty room, I would be a shoo-in candidate.

But enough about my day.

We quickly turn again to We Learn Wednesdays, and this, the 31st installment and the 52nd marker in the effort. You remember this one. I ride my bike around the county seeking out historical markers. I shot this last December in a stockpiling effort to keep the feature active during the indoor season — and I think I’m now out of that stockpile.

This is … well, you can read the signs.

Near the end of the 18th century three men, Col. Robert G. Johnson and Dr. James Van Meter and Dr. Robert Hunter Van Meter, brothers, decided the area needed a Presbyterian church. Johnson was raised Episcopal in a nearby town, but found the style of the church to be too ritualistic and ornate for his tastes. In that same town were the Van Meters, men held in high regard.

In the early years, the Episcopals had no clergy, so they invited Presbyterian ministers to preach for them. That was the arrangement between 1809 until 1820, but they were predestined to go separate ways. The 17th Article of the Church of England, the one about predestination, was at the root of it. The Presbies wanted their own church building. So, on a Tuesday morning, March 6th, 1821, the morning after James Monroe was inaugurated for his second administration down in Washington, they laid the cornerstone to their first building.

Johnson donated the land and he and the brothers Van Meter covered much of the cost of the building. The congregation expanded in 1835, and then started work on this building in July of 1854, just a few days after George Eastman, the inventor of the Kodak camera, was born in New York.

After about three years of work, including moving the bell from the old church to the new, the building was opened.

(Eventually, the bell went to the fire department.)

The church has a Hook and Hasting two manual, fifteen rank pipe organ. It was built in 1878 and installed in 1879 by the Boston firm. Air for the organ was supplied by hand pumping until 1902, when a water-driven motor was installed. They upgraded the organ again, to electricity, in 1912.

As for the men, we’ve met Robert Johnson before. He was the slave owner, historian, horticulturalist, judge and soldier, the guy with the apocryphal story about tomatoes. He died four years before this building went up. Neither of the Van Meters saw it, either.

Scottish immigrant John McArthur Jr. was the architect, a prominent figure from Philadelphia. He would later design the landmark Philadelphia City Hall, then the tallest occupied building in the world. While many of his works have been demolished, at least a dozen or so still exist.

McArthur learned his craft from a man named Thomas Ustick Walter, the fourth architect of the U.S. Capitol, who redesigned the dome and created the office wings. He would have been there the day Monroe was inaugurated, when the first cornerstone of this congregation’s first church was laid. And while his student was overseeing the construction design of this church, he was also working on his own church in Philadelphia.

Architects must keep busy. Shame so many of them don’t see the fruits of their labors. McArthur could have seen this church, but he did not live to see his masterpiece, the Philadelphia City Hall completed. He died, at 66, in 1890. The city hall was finally finished in 1910.

Now the only thing I have to do to tie this up is to find a photo from Eastman of any of these buildings. Or a letter from the Van Meter family to the Kodak people.

Wouldn’t that be a neat solution?

Failing that, how about this. Robert Van Meter and Robert Johnson, two of the founders of this church are each buried not far away, but I only just discovered that. I’ve seen the church where James Van Meter is buried. I showed it to you last September.

You can learn so much on a bike ride.

We’ll see another great marker next week. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

Today’s dose of relaxation is right here. Enjoy the zen of the California coastline. This place is so remarkable, and so ubiquitious, that there weren’t even signs offering a name. There are road signs on the Pacific Coast Highway that offer you a spot to pull over and soak in the beauty. The signs say Vista Views. And so that’s the name of this place. But, man, it needs a real name. This was majestic.

Elsewhere, a little slow motion of the water coming right up to your toes. If you feel the water in your socks it is likely because I felt the water in my socks and that’s called mediated transference, which, is not a thing, not in this way, not until just now, because I made it up.

Makes sense, I am a media professional steeped in the study of media effects. But look at all of that water sliding on in!

How long do you figure those rocks have sat there, waiting out time and wind and the water for their fate?

I have, I think, two more slow motion videos from this trip. But there are plenty of other Relax Enjoy Repeat videos still to come, not to worry.

We’re getting pretty good at dragging things out around here, aren’t we?

California / history / markers / video / We Learn Wednesdays / Wednesday — Comments Off
27
Mar 24

Midway through another one

It will take some doing, but the next week and a half will be busy and productive. There’s a lot of grading and class prep and things of that sort to get to. It started yesterday, with the grading of midterm exams. That was a full afternoon. But it does not end there, no.

This is the week where I found two mistakes in my planning of the semester. Every class has something due this week, meaning I have to grade … everything. It’s a real first world problem, yes, I know. It is also the second time I’ve had this problem this term.

The issue becomes one of pacing. The goal is to get all of this week’s assignments completed this week. The challenge is to give myself time to do all of that, but also to let each little piece breathe. Read and critique and evaluate a handful of stories, take a break to clear the mind, and then come at it a new.

If I pace it right, I’ll get through everything Friday night. Maybe Saturday.

And next time I plan out a semester calendar, this will definitely be top of mind.

Let’s go back to California! Here’s a nice meditative video from the Pacific Coast. Enjoy a minute on me.

Relax. Enjoy. Repeat.

Here’s another slow motion video from Spooner’s Cove, as well.

Maybe I’m the only one amused by the slow motion waves, but there’s only nine more of them to go.

Time for this week’s installment of We Learn Wednesdays. This is our 30th installment and the 51st marker in the effort. The effort is riding my bike around the county to find the historical markers. I shot this last December in a stockpiling effort in the hopes of being able to stretch them out until I could ride outside again in the spring — which will surely happen just any day now …

(It’s been 48-52 and damp and gray for days and that meteorological condition is no longer novel.)

Over in Salem, they mark the old Star Hall Corner.

Site of Star Hall, demolished in 1898 for the building of City National Bank. Legend has it—if you step on the star, you will always come back to Salem. Rededicated Aug. 24, 1996

Founded in 1888, City National Bank was swallowed up in a merger in 1984. It’s just one bank, but I wonder how that paralleled the fortunes of the town. Today that bank looks empty, and there’s no sign giving hints of what may have been recently happening inside. You can still see an ATM in a side foyer, though.

It’s an important intersection in the town. In earlier, lively days, this was a choice corner, Jones Corner. There was a clothing store there and around it there were stores, warehouses, tailor shops, shoe shops and more. A man named Ashton ran the clothes shop, he had a big star as part of his outdoor signage. The star became iconic, and, overtime, Jones Corner became Star Corner. You can see it here.

A floor or two above the street was the social club, Star Hall. Dances and parties abounded. See and be seen. But social connections gave way to bigger financial opportunities, of course. Apparently, the City Council and the bank developer agreed to take the star from that sign and marked the spot.

The commemoration has been there longer than the club existed, I suppose. The rededicated marker, too. Anyway, here’s the star.

Just before I saw Star Corner a panhandler wandered over to ask for five bucks. I told her I did not have the money. Didn’t even have my wallet, as I was dressed in cycling clothes that day. She went on about her way and I thought, Five bucks? Street-level inflation!

It’s a struggling area. Across the street are a pair of century-old buildings that were rehabbed a decade ago as apartments. The hope was that they would help re-energize the historic district. It’s close. You can tell. Part of being close is that it’s also close to falling back on harder times again.

I wonder if anyone has considered adding a social club.

Next week’s marker will take us to a beautiful church building. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

California / journalism / markers / photo / video / We Learn Wednesdays / Wednesday — Comments Off
20
Mar 24

The most wide-ranging Wednesday post in a while

This evening I watched a man in a custom suit and sneakers talk about his life’s work, listened as he painted a picture that he thinks everyone is out to get him, that money is everything and that having a life is secondary to having work. It would have been disconcerting if it didn’t come off as sadly insecure.

It’s one thing to be driven. To have gotten, undeniably, indisputably, to where you want to be and still come off that way, it seemed difficult, in the day-to-day. I could be wrong. The guy had on a great suit. It fit him, and the rest of the vibe.

Where as I was wearing shoes that look good, but don’t exactly treat my feet well. I like them, but there better not be a lot of walking around in them. And I’m secure enough about my feet to be able to say that.

It is not a phrase I use. It’s not one I think of often. If I were trying to sum up a person, or a presentation, or an attitude, it’s just not a descriptor I reach for. But at one point during the talk it slipped out of my mouth, under my breath, to no one in particular. At the end of the talk, as everyone stood to leave, the strangers in front of me stood and looked back and we all made eye contact, as you do. One gentleman said, “He seems very insecure.”

Also, I’ve become a huge proponent of having a life and an identity away from the office. One day I’ll even make one!

Right now I’m too busy watching things bloom, and waiting for it to get just a little bit warmer. But instead of a steady, constant, climb of mercury, we are stuck in this middle ground of 48 degrees. We are stuck in that time of relative temperatures. Six, seven weeks ago, you’d take 48 degrees, and you’d be pleased with it. But now, somehow, the body knows better. It isn’t supposed to be 48 degrees anymore. The rational mind has known this for some time, but now the body has gotten wise.

That’s when the impatience really kicks in.

But the budding and flowering things don’t seem to mind. The magnolia liliiflora is getting ready to put on a show.

It’s a small tree, basically, because the Overambitious Shrub Lobby got to the policy makers. It’s from China, though it’s often called Japanese. And, as you can tell, it will offer many, many blooms before the leaf buds open.

It is a slow growing thing, about six inches a year or so.

Makes you wonder if we cut it back too far last fall.

I guess we’ll find out in two or four years.

Here’s another video from last week’s visit to California. Here, the waves are rolling in on William Randolph Hearst Memorial Beach. Just across the highway and well up the hill is the Hearst Castle. They’re rather fond of the old media magnate. Gave him a nice, quite, beach too.

The Hearst family owned it all, until they gave it to the state in the 1950s.

We were only there for a short while, of course, but it looks like there’s a lot to enjoy there.

Once again it’s time for We Learn Wednesdays. Today’s is our 29th installment, and I don’t know why I’m still counting that. Anyway, I ride my bike around the county to find the historical markers via bike. Good way to see things, and it’s amusing to take pictures of sometimes important old places in funny clothes. This is the 50th marker in that effort, and I shot this one last December in a stockpiling effort.

The stockpile should last until it gets warm, and I can put some road miles in my legs. But I digress.

I digress because I have nothing.

Here’s the building.

And here’s the marker.

It’s gone on sale again just this week. It’s seemed to have been off and on the market a lot in the last several years. It’s been a mixed use rental for the last decade or so. And the building, according to property records, was built in 1888.

The web will not tell me what makes this place deserving of being on the historic register. You’d think the historic register people would put that on a site themselves. The historic register people do not.

Next week, we’ll learn a tiny bit of a long-gone social club. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

Sometimes you run across a good obituary. Obituaries are a celebration of the living, we were taught in J-school, and sometimes the obit writers remember that. It takes a great skill to write a quality obituary, though some of them do come easier than other, prepackaged with magic or memoirs or flacks as they are. A remarkable person, a life well-lived. All of it is found in this one:

As a teenager, Mr. Greenfield was Maximilian Grünfeld, a skinny Jewish prisoner whose job was to wash the clothes of Nazi guards at the concentration camp. In the laundry room one day, he accidentally ripped the collar of a guard’s shirt. The man whipped Max in response, then hurled the garment back at the boy.

After a fellow prisoner taught Max how to sew, he mended the collar, but then decided to keep the shirt, sliding it under the striped shirt of his prison uniform.

The garment transformed his life. Other prisoners thought it signified that Max enjoyed special privileges. Guards allowed him to roam around the grounds of Auschwitz, and when he worked at a hospital kitchen, they assumed that he was authorized to take extra food.

Max ripped another guard’s uniform. This time, it was deliberate. He was creating a clandestine wardrobe that would help him survive the Holocaust.

“The day I first wore that shirt,” Mr. Greenfield wrote seven decades later, “was the day I learned clothes possess power.”

At every turn the obituary gets better and better, and you don’t say that about a lot of newspaper copy. It’s one of the best obits I’ve ever read. And is, without a doubt, the most memorable piece I’ve ever read in a fashion section. Give it a try.