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This Wednesday post is a simple photo dump. These are the picturesque things we saw, two weeks ago, before our big event of the day. It was the train ride before the train ride. Sit back, enjoy these photos of a few of the beautiful views between Zurich and Chur.
Up next, the slowest express train in the world and the Swiss Alps.
This was written for a Wednesday, but it is about the Wednesday from two weeks ago. That’s going to be the way of it around here for the next few weeks as we cover two weeks of amazing travels to, hopefully, makes up for the two-week break I took on the site. So cast your mind back two weeks …
We caught our flight out of Indianapolis with no problem, though the security line was as long as I believe I’ve ever seen at that fine airport. Everyone has stopped wearing masks. (Except me.)
I’m overgeneralizing there. A few people were wearing masks, but not wearing them correctly. I don’t understand this at all. You’ve had time to figure out the nuances of the respiratory system’s two exit and entry points. No one is making you do it anymore, so it isn’t a protest. You’re just bad at this. (And cover your nose.)
The first flight was on a small plane to New York and that was easy. We spent some time in a crowded Delta lounge, where we had dinner. It’s a serve yourself cafeteria-style arrangement. I had mild jerk chicken and rice. It hit the spot. We stayed in the lounge perhaps too long. At the door we asked a Delta employee some question or another about our flight and the terminal it was in and he looked startled. “You need to leave, now!”
And so we did. We strolled over to the JFK terminal train and somehow went through security again. Got on the next plane with no problem.
You’re supposed to sleep when you’re traveling east great distances (that’s a clue), but sleeping on a plane isn’t always easy. I decided to put on a movie because the screen is right there in the back of the next seat. I watched Contact, thinking Jodie Foster would be good company to nod off. I wound up watching the whole movie. Two-and-a-half hours I could have been asleep.
But I did get about three hours. Maybe four? We landed, breezed through border control, or customs, which seemed surprisingly easy. So cursory was the exchange I’m not sure if we were even legally there. We have one stamp each, though, and the Uber driver came to pick us up. No one at the airport tried to keep us from leaving, it must be official.
So we arrived at the hotel in the middle of the day. Perhaps a bit too early for check-in. There was a long line of people at the many minimalist check-in desks learning they, too, were too ambitious. When we made it to the desk the cheery person said, I’m sure for the 73rd time in a row, that our room wasn’t ready, and would we mind waiting an hour or so?
We waited in the lobby for an hour or so, watching other guests’ create these shared experiences. We got a room upgrade out of the deal, though. Small room, perfectly functional. Reasonable bed. Outstanding view.
Can you guess where we were? (Here’s another clue!)
If you know what you’re looking at there’s an important site (Another clue!) far off into the distance. And if you leaned onto your tiptoes and craned your neck into an uncomfortable position and looked as far as you could to your right you’d see an iconic giveaway. (Not pictured here.)
We ventured out to take care of the travel logistics for the next several days. Oh boy. First we had to figure out where we were, in relation to everything else, and how to get to where the logistics could be resolved. The online “experience” hasn’t been very helpful. And the language barriers (A clue!) in person were a bit challenging, as well. There was some aimless wandering, some “Could you speak more slowly, please?” and some waiting in lines. We have a day trip planned for Friday, which was only resolved satisfactorily after we were lied to a few times in a most haughty way. (Another clue!) But everything for was finally resolved. We also had to work out transportation for the second half of our trip to work out, which meant more wandering, for another office. Also resolved, but we will ultimately add a day here and reschedule a thing there. One of those frustrating-in-the-moment-but-won’t-matter-next-week experiences. Resolved to our satisfaction is the key.
After we had all of that taken care of, we had dinner with Thomas, a friend from Germany, and his colleague and his student, at a little sidewalk cafe. The food was filling and flavorless, and, most importantly, helped pass a little extra time until darkness so we can go to sleep. So we can defeat jet lag. This never happens.
But the question remains, where were we? If you are stumped, come back tomorrow, when the question is answered, and the fun begins.
We haven’t read any old newspapers recently. Let’s go back 61 years, to northwest Alabama. This is The Florence Herald, which we have examined here from time-to-time in the past. Some of my family would have read this paper. Indeed, there’s a brief mention of my great-great grandfather here in a legal notice. And some of the family names appear in some of the local correspondence. But let’s look at the really fun stuff from the weekly, which was published on Thursday, May 18, 1961.
There’s a fair amount to get through over your second coffee. Let’s dive in. This is the lead local story, in a paper that was helping its community celebrate the centennial of the Civil War.
The Reynolds Metals Company, founded in Kentucky in 1919, was a big, big deal. They originally supplied the wrappers for cigarette and candy companies and in the 1920s took over Eskimo Pies because of the foil. They were growing quickly, and in a few more years a few more acquisitions the original U.S. Foil Company became Reynolds. They moved HQ to New York, and then to Richmond. Soon they were mining bauxite, and they opened the plant mentioned here in 1941.
Just before the United States entered the war, R.S. Reynolds ramped up production. He was in aluminum, after all, and he saw a need. Now the second largest producer of basic aluminum in the U.S., Reynolds was key in aircraft production, among other things. A lot of that was rolled out right there. They kept growing after the war, indeed they snatched up six government defense plants that were up for disposal. Reynolds later expanded into non aluminum products such as plastics and precious metals, introducing Reynolds Plastic Wrap in 1982. Odds are you’ve got some of their product in your kitchen cabinets.
The company took out a full page ad in this same issue of The Florence Herald thanking their employees and the community. “Surely the only thing which can surpass our first 20 years at Listerhill will be our next 20 years,” was the last line over R.S. Reynolds’ name. Indeed, they put 37 more years into the area.
When they sold to Wise Metals in 1998-99, there were 1,600 people working at the plant. A global concern picked up Wise in 2015, it was an eight-figure deal. The company is still in operation there, still employing more than 1,200. They recycle and make aluminum cans.
I don’t know if you noticed that story about “Viet Nam” that was set just below the Reynolds piece, and the English standalone photo It’s 1961, and there’s so much patriotic optimism in that story.
Below the fold on the front page …
So it is an interesting time in local and national politics. I shared with you one of the bullet points from Harold S. May’s front page column.
Dude.
May wrote in this same format every week. I looked ahead. “What has Mr. Average Citizen done to deserve it? All of us will suffer alike,” wrote the columnist in the next issue. The columnist — who had served on the Florence Housing Authority and was the chairman of the local board of education — made another, terrible convoluted mention two weeks out, until, finally, he moved back to his local observations and recycled bon mots.
“The wife with plenty of hose sense never becomes a nag,” was one of the lines just above the condemnation above.
It’s a fascinating column in its own way, if you can overlook the regrettable parts.
Finally, according to the search function, he ran this same ad the next three weeks. And then, apparently, never again. There’s a story behind this.
Sadly, we’ll never know it.
I took a lunchtime walk to see some of the flowering dogwoods on campus.
I do enjoy the flowering dogwoods. It was a warm afternoon, a warm day. Summer arrived with a 91-degree high, and just like that the winter is over. And so was the week-and-a-half of spring. Now all is forgiven and forgotten, until Thanksgiving or so. Because all of this is happening.
The shady paths were a welcome part of the walk. One of the fun parts about walking beneath trees is that the light sometimes pokes through from above in the most inspired places.
Most people wait and work for a little moment like that. Me, I just pull out the phone and opened the camera app and there we all were together, for just the right moment in time.
I do enjoy the flowering dogwoods.
This story dates back to March. It goes back farther, but I don’t know when the device failed and I don’t recall when we noticed it it. But in March, I decided to try to fix the thing and after exhaustive on-and-off troubleshooting, I had to admit defeat.
The device was the semi-smart controller for our fancy ceiling fan. What makes it fancy? It has remote controls. We don’t have remote controls. But the fans are remote control ready! And I’ve never been sure why, under anything approaching normal circumstances, a remote control for a ceiling fan was a desirable feature. Also, this ceiling fan has heft. As in it looks heavy. I’ve held it — caught it while standing on a ladder while effecting a previous repair, in fact, — and it is heavy. These things make it fancy, which is how I found myself in an email and phone conversation with a guy from the tech support department of the ceiling fan company.
The wall unit is busted, I told him. I spelled out all of the things I’d tried. He made sure I’d thought of everything. So it’s decided, then, the wall unit is busted. Now, what to buy as a replacement? This company makes a hefty ceiling fan, and has a lot of different styles, but they aren’t built as a consumer-facing company. And if their catalog wasn’t online you could say they didn’t belong in this century. He told me what to buy. You can barely find it in a search. He could not sell to me. They do not deal with customers directly, his helpful phone call notwithstanding. So I had to find a retailer. There are a few in the state. None close by. I called the closest one.
I wish I’d called the second closest one.
After two or so weeks of back-and-forth phone calls with the lighting store, and waiting for the lighting store to have back and forth calls with the ceiling fan company, we finally got all of this figured out. The ceiling fan people in Texas would send this one component to the lighting store an hour away. Can they send it to me? No. Can the lighting store send the little switch to me? Yes. But that’ll cost an additional $75 dollars.
This thing is the exact size of a light switch, which is what it is. It cost $32. But you can — never mind. We’ll just come get it.
The lighting store says the component will arrive in two to three weeks.
Say what you will about Amazon and anyone else who has innovated the home delivery business, but some of the changes they have brought to us have been undisputedly better.
In the third week it arrived. That was last week. The store basically has bankers’ hours, so the little control switch sat on a shelf for a few days, until The Yankee was able to be in the area while they had the Open sign lit.
Now, for all of that, the tech support guy was solid. I said to him, I’m fine swapping out an outlet or a failed switch, but this device has a little more to it, am I going to be in over my head? He said I’d be fine. But if I felt I needed help, to get back in touch and he’d talk me through it.
Tonight the old switch controller thing came out. The new one went in with a minimal amount of fuss or complaint. And, most importantly, I was able to make it work.
OK, most importantly, we didn’t cause an electrical fire. And almost as importantly, the fan and the light now work once more.
There was a third-most important thing, as well. While I had the light switch cover off and after I’d removed the defective switch, I examined the standard switch to the left. Almost six years (!!!) we’ve been in this house and we have no idea what that switch does. And now I know why we don’t know what it does.
It does nothing. The light switch isn’t wired to anything.
What do you do with an extra light switch? What can you do with an extra light switch? Clearly, I need an electrical genius.
I believe I had the last meeting of the semester today. Things aren’t over, but the meetings are. And the activities are wrapping up this weekend. Once those tasks are complete, we’ll be doing … summer things.
Personally, I think everyone needs a few weeks off, unscored against their vacation time. It’d do everyone a world of good after the last few years. It’d be useful for the year to come.
Just you wait, someone is going to say this out loud in a few months, but you heard it here first.
But no one listens to my ideas.
Makes the meetings fun.
Here are some more of the programs IUSTV has produced at the end of the semester. I’m told there’s still maybe one more show to roll out this week.
They are still editing and producing shows during finals week. It’s impressive.
Robert Steven Mack is interviewing American Enterprise Institute’s Dr. Zack Cooper, about China’s relationship with Russia and the U.S. after the invasion of Ukraine. Pretty hefty stuff.
Riley and Alex follow the fan shenanigans — I’m just going to call them fananigans — during Little 500 weekend. It’s real atmospheric stuff. Fun, enthusiasm, silliness. What a campus should be — at least part of the time.
It took me two episodes to get it, but I’m a slow learner. That show grows on you in a hurry. I’ll miss it over the summer, but I hope it comes back even bigger in the fall.
We went for a bike ride this evening. She had to do hill repeats. Usually, when I even hear the phrase “hill repeats” I lose two or three miles per hour off my average. But I checked my numbers just before we started the hills, and just after, and I managed to hold everything steady throughout the up and down and up and down and up and down of the hill repeats.
There will be harder, longer hills later. I’ll be slower. The above paragraph will not apply to that experience.
Here we are — well, here she is; I am behind the camera — after those hills, and weaving through the last two neighborhoods before the house. In the last one we found ourselves in an impromptu sprint. We were doing the mid 30s and I was running out of gears.
I was probably working harder at it than she was.
She’s fast.
