Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

cycling / Friday / Indigo Girls / music / video — Comments Off
08
Dec 23

A bike ride and live music all in one day!

Last night was my last regular class of the semester. Tomorrow that’ll start sinking in. Or, perhaps, next Wednesday or so. And that feeling will be moved right out by the impending need to fixate on the spring term. Continual relaxation will be allowed for approximately 48 seconds on Wednesday morning, sometime between the hours of 3 and 4 a.m.

Monday I will be in a classroom, but only to help. No lecture offered. And finals begin on Wednesday. Grading will be done, roughly, between now and the next notable shift in continental drift.

But, hey, no lecture notes to write. No slides to change or create. Few things to monitor online. Eventually.

Today’s part in the celebration of all of this was to do chores around the house this morning, wade through some grading around midday, and go on a bike ride this afternoon.

It seemed a pleasant enough afternoon to hit the road, and so I did. Long tights over bib shorts, wind vest over long sleeve shirt. Real gloves, ear muffs. You can almost dress warmly if you put enough on.

I went about 12 miles to the county seat and got, I think, all of the markers along that road. This is the intersection of the historic district and the modern downtown. In fact, they are the same thing. In that two-block area I got, I think, 14 markers today. (So I have, now, enough on hand to get through the real cold when I’ll be riding indoors, but need material for the Wednesday feature.) There are about 19 more in that town. The rest I’ll probably find in the spring or next summer. And, somehow along the way, I hope the math of it all makes sense. Supposedly there are 115 markers in the county. I have shared 37 of them with you, I just mentioned another 23. I don’t see how there are 75 still out there. Some have been removed, so it’s really not 115, but the rest … well, I’ve surely miscounted. Badly. And more than once.

But you don’t think about that while you’re out there. The being there is what takes time. It’s all about trying to get across the road safely, being efficient, getting a good shot of the location, maybe notice something that isn’t always seen. Sometimes people want to talk. Today a woman asked me if I was sightseeing. Then she asked me for five dollars. Inflation has hit panhandlers, too, I suppose.

Getting to a location is easy. Getting back is fast — if you don’t take a wrong turn, which I often do. This impacts getting back home before the darkness falls.

I failed at that today, even though I only missed one road today. I was sprinting for the last stop sign on the way back in, about two miles or so to go, when I gave in and turned on my headlight. I was sure it would be dark. It was. I was sure it would be cold. Almost. I was sure I would be late. I was not.

Got cleaned up. We had dinner, and then we headed out for a show.

When bands you love come within 30 miles of you, you’re duty-bound to go to the show. And so we got out the map and headed to a place called the Scottish Rite Auditorium, which was having a wedding downstairs, and a folk rock ‘n’ roll show upstairs, simultaneously.

Be Steadwell opened for Emily and Amy. Creative, nice voice, quite funny. Steadwell said, a few times, how thrilling it was to open for the Indigo Girls. And then they brought her back on stage later. Amy complimented her for the audience participation part of this song, and for the song itself. It was a simple and sincere and sweet comment about that funny little love song. It was a “I know exactly what you meant. I’ve been there, too,” comment. You could hear the admiration and the understanding that came with it.

Something going on at the wedding was giving some feedback in their ear monitors, and the suggestion was made that all 1,000 of us or so go downstairs and wish the happy copy well, with two singers from Georgia. This would have been a good time, but the concert was better.

And then the tour dog stole the show.

All of that is in here, but mostly this is a quick Lyris Hung video, because I never show off her violin enough, and one of the things this particular audience was caught up in was her string work. So there’s a real fine solo in here. And then the dog part takes place at 5:45, if you’re interested.

It started because of a conversation about the band’s road crew digressed into a discussion about the dog’s genetic makeup. They had a friendly wager, tested the DNA and everyone was wrong. But, Amy said, the money they put in the pot all went to an animal clinic. And so, later, someone brought out the dog, because stage shows, it turns out, need pets.

Look at this dog.

They’re missing an opportunity here. They should do this for every show. At the merch tables, they should be selling whatever sweater the dog was wearing. It’d be a popular product.

It was a mild audience. The Friday-night-just-out-of-work crowd, maybe. But the performances were good, we had a great time, and we left singing about picking the best greens in the garden.

Oh, and The Yankee realized she’d been singing the lyrics to an Indigo Girls song incorrectly. It only took her the better part of 30 years and a dozen or so shows to notice. But that’s a different story.

music / Re-Listening / Rowan / Thursday / video — Comments Off
07
Dec 23

Affirmation: I’m not behind, I’m not behind

I get these monthly emails from Strava, the exercise tracking app. Well, that’s one of the apps. Every month they try to encourage me. Look what you’ve done! You’re doing great! (Even if you’ve done less!) Look how many people you congratulated for their efforts, too! And look! A few of them gave you some pats on the back, too.

They call theirs kudos, because every social app has to have different word for this. I’m afraid, or excited, I can’t decide, that this will be what ultimately limits the growth of the social media data mining industry: running out of ways that we can all say we saw each other’s post, image or exercise.

Anyway, November was a good month on the bike. A record-setting month, for me. Most miles ever! By one mile! And I did that with the busy holiday week and some bracingly cold weather. “Bracingly” means stimulating and invigorating, so “bracingly” might be the wrong word to use there. Anyway, a big month, and also, I had a few achievements on Strava, itself.

December will likely be underwhelming, in comparison, but that’s OK! It’ll be exactly what it can be, which is exactly what it needs to be. And it’ll also be a cap to my best year ever on the bike, in terms of miles. And, somehow, for some reason, I am still riding outside. In December.

For a few more days, anyway.

But not today. Today, we were on campus.

Finals begin this time next week and so, for today’s classes, this was our final regular class together. Most people were able to stay awake. I think. I might have nodded off once or twice myself.

We talked about video graphics today. I had 13 pages of notes to share. Twelve of them were good pages. I probably should have stopped at a dozen. The slides were quite fun, though, and it allowed us to put a nice little bow on the class.

This semester these classes learned about camera controls, camera movements, audio capture and had some studio time. They made a commercial, beginning the lifelong journey of editing and post-production. Just recently we talked lights and graphics and some of the other tools and techniques like file management, group work and deadlines that go into media productions. Right now, they are working in groups on fake public service announcements.

From the snippets I hear, there is a lot of enthusiasm for that project. Some people seem very entertained by it. That part might be the best part of all, particularly for an introduction class.

Let’s go back to the Re-Listening project, where I am listening to all of my old CDs in the car, but in the order in which I acquired them. These aren’t music reviews — no one needs that — but an exercise in sharing great music, digging up some old memories and padding out the blog.

Today’s album debuted in 1995. I bought the thing in the summer of 2004, and I don’t know why I waited that long, but I’ll plead poverty. I don’t remember the first time I heard “Blue,” but it was in the 90s. And I remember playing that song, and a few others from “Tomorrow the Green Grass” on college radio a lot.

You’ll remember “Blue.” Everyone remembers “Blue.” For a time, everyone had a cover of “Blue.” It was the proto-Wagon Wheel. You might not recall the video. I certainly don’t. Ignore the obvious pretentiousness of 1990s music videos and soak in some harmonies.

Some hack writer around that time write of them:

At the intersection of country and jangle-pop lies a dusty old house. The upper-midwestern architecture is out of place with the scraggly ground surrounding it. Paint is peeling and flecking from the white porch railing. The planks of that porch are old and should be aged, but they’ve been worn smooth by bad-assed boots. There’s a swing, but it rarely swings; a ceiling fan that never turns.

When it rains — if it rains — the precious fluid falls in big dollops onto dust so dry it long ago gave up. The roof on that porch is tin — what else could it be? — the shutters could use some work and the whole structure got on its knees for paint three or four seasons ago. It has had lots of residents, that dusty old house at the intersection of country and jangle-pop. Its foundation is sturdy, its lines clean, its soul still dreaming.

The music coming from inside: The Jayhawks.

Whoever wrote that is cheesy, but it isn’t wrong. Not really.

I might have written it.

If there was ever a band I turned my stereo up too loud for, this was one of those bands. There were a few of them. That song was probably the reason why.

The band was a four-piece back then. Mark Olson was still in the group, this was, I guess, just before the first time he left. He’s splitting time with Gary Louris. Marc Perlman was there, of course, and Karen Grotberg was still on her first tour of duty. It’s a high quality quartet, but the percussion on the CD is a session player. Tim O’Reagan didn’t join the group until the subsequent tour. For my money, he’s been the player that makes the band work ever since.

Well, O’Reagan, and also Grotberg’s magical ability to fit in all over the melody.

Olson’s wife, the legendary Victoria Williams plays on the record, as does the great Lili Haydn, who was the virtuoso person you called if you wanted a violin for your rock ‘n’ roll project. You can hear on the song above.

This was The Jayhawks’ fourth record, but the first one I bought. (There will be many more, and some of them right away.) And there’s a Grand Funk Railroad cover right in the middle. I distinctly remember discovering that, a mixture of “HeyWhatWow!?!?!”

There’s a fair amount of stylistic exploration in this record, and none of it seems wasteful. You have to put that up against what was happening in music in 1995 — a year dominated by Garth Brooks, Van Halen, Boyz II Men, Springsteen, 2Pac, Lion King, Live, Ice Cube, Hootie & the Blowfish, Michael Jackson, Selena, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Coolio, Alanis, Mariah Carey and The Smashing Pumpkins. These guys, if you could find the record, would stand out. Several decades on, not every song is my favorite — that’s coming on another part of their discography, when they strip things back to the essential elements — but every one of them is still worth a listen.

My lovely bride and I saw them when we were first dating. It was an over-and-back trip to Atlanta, my first and so far only time seeing The Jayhawks, and the show that told me I was too old to do all of that in one day and go to work early the next morning.

Happily, they’ll be on the road next spring; some of those shows are already sold out. The next time they get close, I’ll be there to see them again.

The next two CDs in my collection are also from The Jayhawks. I bought them in August of 2004, on the day I was accepted into graduate school. I saw it as a little celebration, and that was some reward to myself. But that’s for the next installment of the Re-Listening project.

cycling / history / markers / New Jersey / video / We Learn Wednesdays / Wednesday — Comments Off
06
Dec 23

This took 223 years to write, and is incomplete

This morning was about grading. I paced things out perfectly. There was a big digital stack of things to read and comment on. Each item unique, each requiring some feedback. And that’s the thing, really. How much feedback? I, you’ll be surprised to learn, often have a lot to say. Hopefully some of it is useful. Hopefully some of it gets read.

So I read through and grade and give feedback on one assignment, then take something else off the list, and then back to that. It’s time intensive, but could be beneficial, so I approach it with great care, spreading them out a bit to bring the same enthusiasm to the last as I did to the first. I’ve been going at this since Monday evening. Today, I’ll finish them.

At lunchtime, I went downstairs for lunch, oddly enough. A study break. I had my sandwich and looked up into dark clouds. Storm cloud dark. And then this happened.

It was 40 degrees, I checked as that stuff was falling out of the sky. That changed my carefully planned out list.

I had two lists, actually. One on paper, and another in Word. The Word list got changed. So, more grading, and some writing, because there was no way I was going to go outside in the snow. Shame, too, I had figured out the whole day and had time for a nice medium-length ride. So organized was I! But it snowed for 45 minutes. It was just starting to gather in the grass when the cloud moved out. I did more school work while I waited a while to see if it was really over. To the northwest a sliver of blue broke through.

So I went for a bike ride. The plan was to combine the two usual routes. This would give me a pleasant 35-mile route, and I was going to enjoy all of that, me and my many layers of cycling clothes that keep out the wind. Here’s the last of those clouds moving off, during the first route, about 15 miles in.

I shot a little video soon after that. The last two times I’d been through there this time of day I saw deer running through the field into the tree line. Two rides ago, four deer ran alongside me, a race to the woods. Last time, I counted seven in a full-on sprint.

White-tailed deer can run faster than I can sprint, but I kept up with them. They might have been running at half speed. But, this time, I was prepared. I was going to round that curve and capture a bit of video of a whole herd of deer jogging to my left.

No deer showed up today.

Five miles later, on the second route, all of the old snow clouds were gone, and we were set to experience a beautiful sunset. This was actually going to be a problem though.

I started too late. The sunset came too early. I was still going the wrong direction. So I cut it short, turning south so I could eventually head back the other way. And then I started making deals with my legs. I would really like to make it back to the left-hand turn before it gets dark. Or, at least back to the red light at the crossroads.

I did both, but just barely. I saved about three miles by turning around early, and even so, my last mile tonight was in the dark. Good thing I cut the ride short.

This is the 19th installment of We Learn Wednesdays, where I ride my bike across the county to find the local historical markers. Including today’s installment we’ll have seen 37 of the 115 markers in the Historical Marker Database.

I did not find this marker today, but about a month ago. It was sunny and cool, but I didn’t linger long. The sun was headed to it’s home in the western sky and I had to get back on the road. But you have to stick around long enough to admire a bit of history.

We’re at the oldest AME church in the state, where members can trace their history back 223 years and was apparently the only church from these parts at the founding conference of the AME Church in Philadelphia in 1816.

Philadelphia had a lot of Georgian architecture, which influences the building here. Perhaps that has something to do with the early church leadership, as well. Rev. Reuben Cuff, the son of a former slave, began preaching in a log cabin out in the countryside a few miles away. Oral tradition has it that after the elder Cuff’s owner died, he might have married that man’s widow. The couple had three sons, who had some formal education, which wasn’t locally guaranteed. That last link makes some small leaps about Reuben and his brothers, based on the stories that have been passed down over the years. Like any personal 200+ year old story, it can seem plausible, if the base of it is accurate.

The rest of the story goes that Reuben had nine children with his first wife, and three with his second wife. He died at 81 in 1845. He’s buried in a small family cemetery, near his father. You can see his house here. That research finds he had the only stone house in the township, more than three dozen acres of land and a barn.

In 1839 an arsonist burned the old church building, but the congregation eventually rebuilt. This one, in the Classical Revival style, opened and took the Mt. Pisgah name in the 1870s.

A quick search shows me one photo of the interior of the church building. That organ has two sliders and 20 stops. It dates back to the 1960s.

There’s a small cemetery, which was established in 1860, attached to the church. A 20th century Cuff is buried there.

In next week’s installment of We Learn Wednesday, we’ll see a building that predates this church. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

And now to work on some lecture notes.

bespoke / cycling / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
05
Dec 23

Rhythm, and a lot

I gave a last lecture in a class night. The students were thrilled. I have two more final lectures to prepare for the term. After that it’s finals. Between now and then: the continual effort to get everything sorted and graded. And then finals.

Well, then two deep breaths, and starting work on next term.

And then finals.

Yesterday I was thinking about the natural rhythms of a college campus. In my mind they’ve always been divided into weeks. And for the first few weeks you’re trying to find the term’s beat. Then you grab it. Then midterms, and you grab onto the rhythm once more. Something unexpected might happen, so you try to find it again, and maybe you do. Then finals, and it’s over. And, suddenly, there’s the next term’s cadence to think about. I was thinking about how you never sit in the pocket long, even if nothing unexpected comes up the best you can do is maximize yourself in that rhythm for two months and change. This is where the discipline comes in. The determined can thrive in that pocket. If you can’t, you always feel behind.

I haven’t felt behind — I haven’t in a long time, I guess, so maybe I’m doing well with the meta-rhythm — but I have had to find the new beat.

I started today’s bike ride with no real plan, but I did one of the regular two routes, and added on an extra little bit, featuring that newly discovered road. You know the one. Two lanes, no houses, only the woods on either side. It eventually leads to a busy four-lane road which has a nice clean, broad shoulder. I got a honk and a semi-close pass on that road, right next to the “Report Aggressive Drivers Call 9-1-1” sign.

The universe does enjoy a good laugh.

My fastest tenth mile split was all the way back around at the end of the route, near our neighborhood, where I really poured on the coals and worked up a respectable 24.34 miles per hour. I set no Strava PRs on this ride, generated no power. But I did stay warm. It was 44 degrees when I set out, and 42 or so when I got back. I wear several layers and, today, I added some wrap around ear muffs. Game changer.

It’s hard to get to my phone under all of those layers, plus there are the gloves, and it was gray today, so it didn’t seem worth the struggle. Instead, I just … enjoyed myself?

I enjoyed myself immensely.

Instead of ride photos or ride videos, allow me to share a new shirt I recently made.

Rather proud of that.

In between grading things — and I have been grading a lot of things so far this week — I have also started a new solution for my cufflinks.

Perhaps I should back up. I have a lot of cufflinks. A few years ago I found the style that I favored, and I got a few reasonable deals on french cuff shirts and so I was set. Then the pandemic came along. One thing I did to while away some time was to start making my own cufflinks. Find some good materials, establish a rhythm, and you can make a few pretty quickly. They’re lightweight, comfortable, flexible and functional. I gave quite a few to our old neighbor who liked, too. But I still have a lot.

In the old house, I had a drawer in the bathroom vanity where they were stored. It was functional, but I ran out of soon ran out of space for them.

I have a lot of cufflinks.

I was going to make a special drawer, but then we got great new jobs, put the house on the market, moved and so on. The vanity in our bathroom here, however, does not lend itself to that same drawer idea. So my cufflinks, all of ’em, have been living in Ziploc bags inside of an old grocery bag. But that’s not conducive to making a daily selection.

This is my first experiment.

I have a lot of cufflinks. But look! Room for more!

cycling / Monday / photo / video — Comments Off
04
Dec 23

Cat character analyses

As we start the week off with the site’s most popular weekly feature, I offer you something of a character analysis.

First, we’ll take a glimpse at Phoebe, in one her mid-day favorites, the stairs, enjoying the sun that comes in from the northern windows.

On a different day this week, at a similar time of day according to the photo’s time stamp, Phoebe takes a turn at modeling.

Not to be outdone, on still a different day, Poseidon gives it a try.

Note how they each use their tail in those last two photos.

And on a fourth different day, in the same part of the day, and in the same spot.

The kitties are doing just fine.

Something else that’s doing well is this little rose bush, which I moved into the basement a while back. I have seven plants down there now, and the rose is the best performer.

This is a plant the previous owners left. They had it sitting on the back stairs. We hadn’t moved it from there prior to sliding it indoors for the weather. It never did as well on the stairs, as it is doing in the basement. It might be getting a bit more water now, go figure.

Some of the other plants had the traditional outdoors-indoors struggle. I’ve got lighting for them, but the humidity and temperature transitions can cause some small problems. Most are now beginning to bounce back, though. Now I just have to remember to not forget the basement nursery.

Which reminds me.

We had a bike ride with a friend on Saturday morning. Did the usual route as a trio. Then, my lovely bride went off to do something else and our friend had to head elsewhere for her afternoon plans, so I road some more. I turned a 21-mile ride into a 42 mile ride. Part of that was discovering this new road. It was so quiet. So still. So … odd. The fog didn’t hurt that mood. (And, now, neither does this lossy format compression.)

When I got in I realized that our friend has one of the fastest times on that segment on Strava. It’s a road she took on three years ago, long before she knew we existed. A road she’s probably forgotten.

Today, I returned to that road and raced her. I patterned my tempo over the rest of the route to be ready for that 2.77 mile stretch. I timed it so I could hit the segment with good momentum. I did not waste time fiddling with my phone. I did not sit up for water. I did not take in the sights, creepy as they may be.

I beat her by time by 21 seconds.

I choose to see that as an omen for a good week of bike riding.