Wednesday

cycling / photo / Twitter / Wednesday — Comments Off on So much is unknown from any given point of view
9
Jun 21

So much is unknown from any given point of view

The perspective of walking and distance is an interesting thing. I park in a parking deck when I am at work. The deck is one block from my building. As I crossed onto the middle block today I noticed a fire truck down near where I was walking. And as I got closer I was having this on-again/off-again conversation about how the fire truck was positioned.

It was parked. The lights were on.

It is blocking the entrance and exit to the parking deck.

No it isn’t.

Yes it is. No it isn’t. Yes it is. And so on until, finally, I was there and could tell that the truck was blocking the entrance and exit.

There’s only one. It’s a small parking deck. There are three lanes, two are now devoted to entering and one to leaving. And the truck was blocking the one exit and middle entrance, like so.

I was parked on the second level. Near my car was a campus police cruiser. Unoccupied, but running. Not in a spot, but at one of those hasty angles police sometimes use. It was near another car and one of the corner stairwells. Downstairs were two fire fighters walking out. And another guy, who looked young, had a backpack and a low key fire department shirt on, just loitering at the entrance. You can see him silhouetted above.

And we’ll never know what took place in the parking deck today. It’s a mild curiosity, but, on the other hand, this experience could have been a really lousy day for someone. So that walking perspective is important here, too.

Someone could collect a list of stories like this, little tales with no known outcome, and write an anthology series. I wish I’d started this years ago.

But I suppose I was always too preoccupied with my other You’ll Never Know mind game: What’s the closest I’ve ever come to unwittingly walking over buried treasure?

Boats would count, too. When was I closest to accidentally discovering a lost Spanish galleon?

It’ll make you wonder, that game. But a short-story anthology might actually be more rewarding.

We went for a bike ride this evening. The Yankee has all but gotten her TT bike dialed in, as I feared. And, as I have prophesied, I can’t keep up with her in such a highly refined aero position. She’s too powerful. Also, let’s also blame the gearing. But not my lack of fitness. This too, requires perspective.

That, I also noted on Twitter, is an old gif, and a different bike There was no way in the world I could get my phone out today. I was working too hard to make new art.

So this is how it works now. I have to wait for hills, or rollers, where I know I am sometimes just the tiniest bit better, and really work hard there and close down her advantage incrementally. (It takes many hills.) The rest is guile. Descend those little hills, corner aggressively, win a sprint when she’s just out for her ride and doesn’t know I’m trying to race back ahead of her. Which is how I found myself attacking in a left-hand turn three-miles from the house at 30+ miles per hour.

In her Strava notes, she wrote that it was categorized as an easy ride. It was not easy for me. This is what it takes just to keep up. Perspective.

memories / photo / Wednesday — Comments Off on Re-working an older project
2
Jun 21

Re-working an older project

You might recall I made this, last October.

The idea was I wanted something to hold the little card that opens unlocks doors in our building on campus. Pulling out my wallet every time was getting old. First off, this is wood, so it was easier to clean — when we were still concerned about such things — rather than my quality leather. Second, pulling the wallet out all the time was just getting taxing. Once someone snuck a peak at my driver’s license, just a casual can’t-help-but-see-it sorta thing and I decided there are limits to small talk.

So I needed something else. Well, I have a small stack of business card holders, but I wanted something I could just slip in the front pocket of jeans, so it needed to be a bit smaller. I wound up working up that thing you see above, and I wedged in four or five business cards, just to keep everything snug in there. And it served me well.

The only real problem was that I used the softest wood this side of pine, so I decided not to long after I took that photo, that I should probably seal it. What I applied yellowed almost right away. It wasn’t my favorite look. The problem with that is there are two possible treatments I used on it, and I don’t remember which one caused the yellowing. So now what?

Well, it sits in my pocket 98 percent of the time and no one has been around anyway since almost everyone else is working from home, so it wasn’t a big deal. But this week I decided to sand off that poly and put something else on it. So I sanded it raw with an 80-grit and then worked back up to 600. And then I put on some wood conditioner and, later, a dark stain and poly blend.

Only it didn’t take very well. So I went back for a second coat and applied it different, and it worked much better, aside from the inevitable human error. Because making mistakes is the only way I’ll really re-learn things like stain application that I’m sure I was taught in the seventh grade.

So I sanded it down again. Only this time I didn’t do it completely. I’m trying the shabby look. Why, I should put this on Pinterest.

I would, except I can’t seem to get my camera and lights to cooperate nicely today. But it doesn’t it look like something you’d inexplicably see on a shelf at Hobby Lobby?

Oh, look, this one is a bit better.

And in a week or two I’ll get tired of this shabby look and then do the stain and poly blend properly. Or at least better, and then retroactively justify the errors in the application process. (Take that extra little drip on the artisanal curve, I like that sloppy error!) At which point I will then probably jam the card holder in a pocket before it’s completely dry and ruin a pair of jeans.

Anyway, that’s what I did this evening, aside from pet needy cats.

How was your Wednesday?

Alabama / history / journalism / Wednesday — Comments Off on I promise, you will not see this coming
26
May 21

I promise, you will not see this coming

Yeah, this is one of those old newspaper sort of days. Because we were supposed to go for a bike ride, but that got curtailed by schedules. And so I ended up waiting for the UPS delivery of a package that required the acknowledgement of a human being and bad UPS jokes. Our guy in brown is a pleasant fellow. Easy patter, quick smile and a don’t-you-know-it-pal’o’mine attitude.

I resolved myself to not ask if they’d been keeping him busy, my usual in to regular work patter when someone is on the job. Oh sure, if I saw the guy socially it’d be different — “What do you do? What are the three things wrong with your business? And how is it beating up on the competition?” sort of stuff. But while the guy’s working, all of that seems weird. And it seems like a tired remark to get into the “How are they working ya?” stuff just now, particularly for services like that. I think we all know the answer.

I thought about pulling up the day’s stock reports just to see how Brown was treating him, but I’m glad I didn’t. They’re down just now, FedEx and DHL are both up.

Now, you’d think that idle stock chatter might be too much; the guy wants to get on the road, get this route done, and get home for the evening. You’d be right. I’m sure he did, and I’m sure he was thinking about all of that, too, when he launched into a 90-second bit on British humor, Dr. Pepper and two jokes about my last name.

I hope all the perishable goods had been delivered by then. I was standing in the shade, it was early evening, but the sun was warm and he’s using carbonation puns to see if I’m ready for a Red Dwarf joke.

More than you know, pal’o’mine. I had a friend in college who was a close and careful watcher of that show, and she kept me in the know.

Anyway, let us look back one hundred years into our past. This is the front page of my hometown paper. Not the one where I am now, because they don’t have one from 100 years ago, and none of those ancient names mean much to me anyway, but at least some of the things in this 26-page tome are familiar. And if you were going to read it, pack your lunch.

We won’t examine the stories, because most of them won’t mean much to you or me today. A lot of it is national copy. On the front page there are only two local items, one about the weather (it was hot) one of those took place in Washington D.C., a spat about future road plans. There are several mentions in the broader issue about roads. Seems what they had in 1921 was a mess. And automobiles needed better roads. Funny how some stories never change.

Elsewhere in this edition, there’s a fair amount of small-town happenings, high school class graduations and so on. And there’s a fair amount of passive writing. Conferences were held, and that sort of thing.

So let’s just skim through a few fun advertisements that catch the eye. Like this one.

Which, honestly, I had to read three times before I was convinced it wasn’t a sales pitch for hats. No, it’s for collars, because they were sold separately, remember. And the hats and ties were just implied.

And if you didn’t have shoulders or the rest of a body, like this poor guy, well, you get all that’s your own miserable problem, Bub. Sorta like where you’d go to buy the Lion collars. It’s a mystery to modern eyes.

No mystery here! Get your dry goods at Steele-Smith!

This is the 1st Avenue location, but everyone knew that by then. Their 2nd Ave store burned down a few years prior and there was a movie theater at that location by the time you saw this ad.

This is the location of that second store. The barbed wire on the roof says a lot about the recent years.

I’ve found older ads that show us Steele-Smith was around in at least 1903. And I’ve found a lot of court cases that the company was involved, most about debts owed. There are a lot of variations of the Steel-Smith name — dry goods, cloak, boots — which is curious. It seems Steele-Smith itself went bankrupt in 1924, owing banks some $2,061, or about $32,000 today.

This one was the most interesting one to me. Sounds lovely, and I had no idea about this.

So I went to the wiki, where almost every word was a revelation, which is odd, considering I worked in that spot for eight years.

Some things never change, though I suspect modern medicine has made it to a point that we could see these two lads successfully separated.

That’s the only issue here. Look, step closer to the wall and you can reach the cooling pie tin. What is this? Amateur hour?

Anyway, that flour distributed had just opened their doors the year before. Their location is a parking lot now, serving two closed businesses and the police headquarters. Not sure when Jones-McGrail Flour called it quits, or when flour distribution in general went the way of the buggy whip, but they do shop up in the next few years of phone books.

Speaking of books … this guy’s story winds up on the back pages. The section isn’t labeled “A Yankee Did A Thing,” but it may as well be. William Moulton Marston invented something legitimate. This is basically the systolic blood pressure test, which gets rolled into the modern polygraph.

And if the name William Moulton Marston means anything to you, you’re probably a comic book reader. He was the person who, 20 years after this story, created Wonder Woman. And now that Lasso of Truth is starting to make a bit more sense, isn’t it? He said his wife and his other wife were the inspirations. They were a thruple. And now that Lasso of Truth is starting to take on all kinds of other connotations. The two women also worked in his scientific areas of interest, but he tended to get more of the, retrospectively, for their work. And now those feminist themes Wonder Woman imparts really bring it on home.

Wonder Woman’s invisible plane, I’ve just read, is an allegory. And when you put that and all of the permutations of the plane together, well, that seems alright for a comic book tale.

I honestly didn’t crack open the old newspaper website thinking I would wrap this up suddenly interested in critical-cultural examinations of Wonder Woman, but I also didn’t expect to learn about Edgewood Lake, or that Raymond Rochell, a once-prominent soft drink bottler figured into that environmental project. (He’s in that issue of the paper three or four different times for different reasons.)

And if you don’t think I spent a disproportionate amount of time trying to tie Wonder Woman to either Rochell or Edgewood, you’re sorely mistaken. I mean, sure, she might have liked Orange Crush or 7-Up or even Grapico back in the day, but she’s clearly a Dr. Pepper fan, now.

cycling / photo / podcast / running / Wednesday — Comments Off on Something for you to listen to here
19
May 21

Something for you to listen to here

We had so much to do this week — a week’s summary on Monday and a lot of outdoor wildlife on Tuesday — that we’ve had put off this week’s check-in with the cats until today. Probably the most successful feature on this humble little blog, so let’s get to it.

Phoebe has lately really enjoyed whatever this toy is. We throw it in the air, and she catches it or bats it down. And, now, she … licks it … I guess.

Poseidon has kept his attention on the birds. And the squirrels. And the chipmunks. And the rabbits. And maybe the cicadas. Who knows what he’s looking at here.

I went out for a little run yesterday. It went bad before it started — Not unlike today’s bike ride! — but at least I saw some interesting plant life.

Hand it to those local bike shop bros, though. Ask them to work on three things, get your bike back nine days later and they addressed … at least one of those items. I’m not saying it’s frustrating, but I think you could put those pieces together.

That was a delightful afternoon ride.

I talked with a clinical psychologist this morning about substance use disorder. It was an interesting interview. The tricky part was asking reasonable questions. This is not an area I’ve spent a lot of time in, and I wanted to set up an actual, you know, expert, with some useful softballs.

The hardest part was getting the whole thing down to 30 minutes. Those last 90 seconds or so are always tough. That’s the downside to talking with experts, there’s so much worth hearing.

So click that little play button, and I’ll go find some more people to talk to.

More on Twitter, check me out on Instagram and more On Topic with IU podcasts as well.

Covid-19 / ICR / IU / Twitter / Wednesday — Comments Off on Results: Still happily negative
5
May 21

Results: Still happily negative

Here’s a new thing. I’m running a new campaign that aspires to highlight our scholars in the building. We’ve been mulling this over for a while, but we’re here now. I’m basically in a soft launch, because everything feels like a soft launch right now. So it’s a little social media showing off the thoughtful and important work of people. The idea is that they’ve done the hard part, let us help show it off just a smidge more.

So here’s Jess Tompkins, who has just completed her doctoral work, talking about the research. Kinda neat.

All summer I’ll tinker with settings and styles and, one day, I’ll get it just right. Perhaps, by the time the fall rolls around and we’re back to the new normal — har, har — this will be a part of something larger that really brags on people.

It’s a thing to do.

Walked over to the IU Auditorium for a mitigation test today. They’ve been running spit tests on campus all year, and since November or so, they’ve been doing the lab work here, too. All a part of the work the university has put into keeping students and employees safe. It hasn’t been perfect, what could be? But it has been beyond substantial. It has been thoughtful. It has been effective. It’s gratifying to know that the people that are making the really big decisions are handling things like this conscientiously, and are taking the best advice of the science — from their own experts and points beyond — and applying it as best they can. It’s been the best part of the year.

They did all of this testing with some thought, and some randomization. So it might be that you lived in a place where it would have been difficult to control spread, so maybe you got called in a lot. You might have had some exposure, so you got called in. Or it could be, like me, you got something akin to a jury duty lottery. Sometimes it is just your turn. But, soon after the vaccines rolled out — get your shot — the university decided that once you were fully vaccinated you didn’t need to do mitigation testing anymore.

But you can still schedule your own, even if you’re vaccinated. Looking after people. Anyway, on the walk over:

Anyway, that was one bit of the walk. I enjoy that little stand of trees. Usually a photograph is about timing, but if there’s any sun in the sky it’s the right time to take some kind of picture right there.

Walk in, scan your ID card, get a little vial, spit in it a bunch, and then wipe it down and put it in a little tray. Later they’ll send you an email letting you know how it went. The turnaround today was just over six hours.

Still happily negative.

This is the week where I begin to rediscover free time. During the regular school year I am on campus until all hours of the evening on two or three nights a week, getting done just in time for a late dinner and dishes and trying to stay awake so it feels like I have some free time to read or watch TV or maybe accomplish some minor task around the house. (I usually don’t.) The other days of the week I get to the house just in time to go ride a bike or do something like that. It fills the schedule six days a week, somehow.

But now I can go back to being done at 5 p.m., or thereabouts, and have full, consecutive, evenings to myself. There’s still bikes to be ridden and stuff to do around the house from time-to-time, but it feels different. It’s a part of it, rather than an obstacle to it, somehow.

Monday we went for a bike ride. Yesterday I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I mostly did nothing. Today we were supposed to go for a bike ride, but I got a late start back and so we postponed it and the timing was such that I couldn’t start in on something before dinner. So, again, I didn’t know what to do with myself.

But we had dinner earlier, and at a reasonable hour. A nice change of pace.

Some nights during the school year it’s 9 or later before dinnertime.

All of that wears on you a bit, is all, and when the summer comes I am happy to finally work my way toward something a little less clock-driven.

It’s always nice to see how the other half live.

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