Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Cozumel / links / Rowan / SCUBA / television / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
20
Feb 24

You’re going to watch the video and follow all of the links, right?

Once this day got started, this day got productive. Let’s see, there was a late breakfast. And then I gave Phoebe some extra milk. I did dishes. And then I checked email, and updated various computer things. I pulled in the day’s delivery from the front porch.

I recently met someone who works at the local Amazon distribution center. She told me about the many different kinds of jobs in her building, and the one she’s doing now. I promised to check with her before we ordered anything heavy. Make sure she’s not working that day, ya know. Of course, I could barely pick up the box that arrived today. I hope she didn’t have to heave that to and fro.

I also took care of the garbage and recycling. This was an involved process. There was an extra bag of garbage. And more recycling than usual, owing to cardboard. I haven’t moved this much cardboard since we moved. Some of the cardboard that I recycled today was, in fact, from the move. The move was last June.

Standing at the giant bin, breaking down cardboard boxes by tearing tape with my keys, I narrowly avoided giving myself a cardboard cut. Paper cuts are bad, but cardboard should be registered and require a permit. Dangerous stuff. The guy that works there was patiently waiting on me to finish the task. He was standing down by the two cattle gates at the entrance. I was the last visitor of the day, according to his watch, which said 4:51, but he was ready to get out of there a little early. This was not the regular guy, Milton, that I’ve come to wave at, but another fellow. People are punctual about their early dinner plans, one supposes.

Anyway, the sun was out and it was an easy enough chore, even if it all took the better part of an hour this time. When I backed the car out to set off for the inconvenience center I looked into the yard and the trees beyond and said, “Spring is starting and you can’t convince me otherwise.” I said this to no one but the cardboard and the other recyclables, because there was nowhere to put a human being in my car. But nothing about the drive, the chore, or my return made a convincing counterargument, either.

The long-range forecast calls for the low 60s this time next week.

In class last night we did not talk about the weather. I warmed up, though, with a little history lesson of Voyager 1, the golden record and Blind Willie Johnson. Voyager 1 has been flying my whole life, and more than twice as long as my students have been alive. And these last few months, Voyager has been slowly, sadly, limping to its own end, decades after exceeding its mission parameters. It’s no less sad for the over-achievement. Perhaps more so. Doug Muir wrote something beautiful about it.

Also, a student asked me what I thought about Jon Stewart’s return to The Daily Show. Short version: It felt right. Last Monday’s re-start was a start, a clearing of the throat, a framing of the conversation. His return is going to be best understood over time. So let’s see what he does between now and November.

And what he did last night. My goodness.

My lovely bride and I did our first research in grad school on Jon Stewart. It was one of the first 2,200 or pieces of scholarship about the comedy-satire-politics show. I think the preemptive criticism in the run up to his return was overdone. Stewart still has one of the most unique and powerful voices in the much broader genre, and the circumstances today aren’t that different than nine years ago when he walked away. More acrimonious, but let’s not forget from whence we came.

If anything, the show runners have to consider how the Daily Show’s style of accountability — via the technological breakthrough of database queries and video playback — is finally more widespread now. That, if anything, blunts the ability for him to tackle his first real target, contemporary media. (People forget who the real satire subject matter is.) That part will need to be reshaped, perhaps, and along the way, he’s going to annoy everyone sporting a little letter behind their name. I could do without making the superficial punchline an ad hominem attack, I never liked that part, but he’s still got plenty of punch in his gloves. And the ratings are there too, much to the chagrin of last night’s subject matter.

For the actual class we discussed Ellen Ullman and Nicholas Carr. Basically, what is the internet doing to us, and why is it all bad? The Ullman piece was prescient, she wrote it in 1998, still stands by it, and, what’s more, was correct. The Carr readings date to 2008 and 2010. The latter is a book chapter of his, but that essay in The Atlantic should give us pause.

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

I think I know what’s going on. For more than a decade now, I’ve been spending a lot of time online, searching and surfing and sometimes adding to the great databases of the Internet. The Web has been a godsend to me as a writer. Research that once required days in the stacks or periodical rooms of libraries can now be done in minutes. A few Google searches, some quick clicks on hyperlinks, and I’ve got the telltale fact or pithy quote I was after. Even when I’m not working, I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the Web’s info-thickets—reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts,
watching videos and listening to podcasts, or just tripping from link to link to link.

For me, as for others, the Net is becoming a universal medium, the conduit for most of the information that flows through my eyes and ears and into my mind. The advantages of having immediate access to such an incredibly rich store of information are many, and they’ve been widely described and duly applauded. “The perfect recall of silicon memory,” Wired’s Clive Thompson has written, “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” But that boon comes at a price. As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. And what the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. My mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it: in a swiftly moving stream of particles. Once I was a scuba diver in the sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

I’m not the only one. When I mention my troubles with reading to friends and acquaintances—literary types, most of them—many say they’re having similar experiences. The more they use the Web, the more they have to fight to stay focused on long pieces of writing.

The first time I read that piece I saw a lot of the same complaints. And so I’ve been trying to change my habits — sometimes with more success than others. I think the change has been fruitful, when I’ve been most successful at it.

One of the assignments the students have to do soon includes an element where they chart their own media consumption. If this is done well some people will look at that and think, “Yes, that seems about right.” Others, however, will look at the data they’ve collected on themselves and be stunned.

Maybe that’ll mean something for them going forward.

Let us go forward together, back under the surface of the water.

I made this video before class yesterday with the intention of publishing it then, as well. Only I made a critical error in the rendering and exporting process. (A two-paragraph explanation of everything between now and then goes right here. An explanation made all the more hilarious because I teach this stuff. So I figured: Tuesday. Today, suffice it to say, instead of having to remake the entire video, I remembered Premiere Pro has a pretty decent autosave function, which was a big time-saver.) Having correctly rendered and exported the video, I was able to upload it and remain quite pleased with the result. I think you’ll like it too. I think the beginning and the end are the best part.

Also, enjoy the flounder, the sea anemone and the beautiful eagle ray.

Tomorrow, I’ll have a few more diving photos for you, we’ll go back in time to meet a local 17th century man of considerable importance and I’ll probably try to find a way to talk about riding my bicycle in place. Because, right now, I’m going to go ride my bike.

Monday / photo — Comments Off
19
Feb 24

We had snow this weekend

The forecast called for waking up to three to five inches of snow on Saturday. It was promised to be the good, dry, powdery stuff. We looked up the amount of snow required of a snow blower — because we have a snow blower now — and the consensus was two inches. That doesn’t seem like a lot to me. Drive over it. But maybe you don’t want to. So we could shovel two inches. Only our new driveway is a bit long for shoveling.

The old driveway was a little more than a car length, which you could do with two shovels in no time, and by yourself in about twice the amount of no time. But this driveway is more imposing. We’ve shoveled it once so far, and the evening we did that it was cold. You think you’ll get out there and keep moving and get your heart rate up and your body will warm up, but that did not happen. Also, that was a good six or seven inches of snow and it had been on the ground a day or two when we got back to it. It took a while. We did enough. And that was enough of a reason to invest in a snow blower.

Which of course meant that it sat in its box in the garage for weeks because we’ve had perhaps the mildest January and February possible at this latitude. Now comes the Friday night forecast, and thank goodness there’s nowhere we have to go tomorrow, but still.

So we open the great big Toro box. There’s a snow blower inside. Imagine, for my Southern brethren, a push mower, but, instead of that place on the side where the clippings come out, there’s an ejection portal on the top. You can spin the thing so it can blow strategically to the left or right or, if you are an agent of chaos, straight up into the air. It’s shiny and new. Corvette candy apple red.

I was going to go get a quart of oil, because while we had gas, we had no oil. Except a 12-ounce bottle was included in the box. Good! One less thing to do in the half hour before the hardware store closes. So, let’s assemble the thing. This is what I did before dinner Friday night. Assembly involves five sets of nuts, bolts and washers, and then you put in the oil and gas.

There was a little matter of the nuts, bolts and washers, however. They were not included in the giant Toro box. So I spent a long, long time peering through boxes and tool boxes, tool drawers and other random places I might have put nuts, bolts and washers I’ve accumulated over the years. And what I learned is this: you don’t get as many extra nuts as you do bolts and screws.

Not only do you have to find them, you have to, of course, find pieces that will fit with one another, and the blower itself. Exactly what you should be doing at 8 p.m. on a Friday night before this week’s storm of the century. Two screws, bolts and washers were needed for the handle. I made that work. Three were needed to attach the multidirectional snow chute. Two on either side, done, but less confidently, and a third, which some does … something. You’ll probably only notice it when you’re rotating the chute or when the whole machine has rattled into action. Thing of it is, this Toro has a hard-mounted, threaded bolt post. I only needed to find a nut for it. Except I didn’t have the hardware.

Now, I figured I could tear the house apart and find the right size. But that nut, wherever it is, is doing something important already. So I strapped three bungee cords to the thing and pronounced it road worthy. The most ratchety, brand new, road worthy snowblower in three counties, I’m sure.

I decided to wait until the morning to fill it with oil and gas. I’ve done all this in good spirits, and why would I want to ruin my Friday night with issues of dripping, pouring, volume or viscosity? Besides, let’s wait to see what we actually get overnight.

We got about two inches of snow. The beautiful, wonderful, dry, powdery version. The kind that looked beautiful on the lawn, and could not stick to the patio, driveway or roads. And now we can find replacement parts for the new snow blower in our own good time. (Ensuring we don’t have to use it for a nice long while.)

Until then, welcome to our temporarily monochrome world.

Also, I noticed Friday night when I did a preemptive inspection of the fig tree, that the first signs of spring are growing in one of backyard beds. They’re a hardy sort, at least.

As I said, the dry, powdery sort of snow.

And, as an extra bonus, it looks like it only came from the one direction.

The peach tree was doing just fine.

And the pear tree in the front yard had a good grasp of things, as well. This was a delicate snow, but it knew a thing or two about balance.

Or, if you want something more colorful, the flowers inside are still stinking the place up. These look like they should be dry, brittle and crusty.

Instead they’re soft and frail, like the sleeves of an old silk blouse.

The lilies, though, they’ve really come to life this weekend.

Back outside, our neighbor puts on the best sunsets.

Can I tell you how awesome that snow was? It was quite, pretty, dry and clean. By the time I went outside to take that sunset photo and walk around the back of the yard to put a few random sticks on the stick pile, the snow was all but gone.

By today, the only evidence of any weekend precipitation was in the perpetually shady spots.

The cats did just find with the winter weather. Here is Poseidon, in his warm kitty cave, in front of the space heater.

I don’t know why he always thinks he wants to go outside. He is too accustomed to all of the comforts of indoors.

Phoebe went another route to keep herself warm.

Both were effective. And now let’s bring on the inevitable sprint to spring.

Auburn / Cozumel / Friday / Glomerata / history / photo / SCUBA / site — Comments Off
16
Feb 24

A nice package arrived today

On the front porch, and a day earlier than anticipated, was a box with two books inside. I found these online, on e-Bay, actually, in one of the more fruitful examples of late night insomnia. The prices were low and right and the end of the auctions were listed during the Super Bowl.

No one was paying attention to e-Bay. But I have a particular set of skills, and so I was paying attention to e-Bay and watching the game and silently wondering, for about the sixth year in a row, why we still get worked up about the commercials which were — not exactly pedestrian — but standard fare for the most part. Many commercials are well done these days, so you have to really stand out with celebrities, but they’re in spots all the time. Many commercials are good. And so even the good commercials debuted during the Super Bowl didn’t stand out too much, except for the ones that were obviously going to be controversial in some corner of the web. And that wretched Temu ad.

But I digress. I won both auctions. The nice lady who sold me the books offered to combine shipping and, today, they have arrived.

I opened the box, and inside were two large Ziploc bags. Inside each bag was a book. That book was wrapped in guerilla-resistance strength cling wrap. And, beneath, that a two layer roll of bubble wrap.

The woman who sold me these books really understands me.

Inside the first bubble wrapped, shrink wrapped, Ziploc bag was this.

That’s the 1912 Glomerata, the yearbook from my alma mater. This book is 102 years old, and the cover is showing that age. Even if it does need rebinding, the pages inside are basically perfect. The cover, particularly of the older books, is where the fun is.

Longtime readers know I collect the Glomeratas. It seemed like a good thing to get. They make a handsome bookcase. And it’s a unique thing to acquire. I know of two other people who dabbled in this. And, importantly, it is a finite thing. The first Glom was published in 1897. (I don’t have that one, so if you get a lead … ) and the last, latest one I’ll collect was the 2016 book. There are 120 in between. (One year they published two books.) I have 112 of them.

As I said, it’s a handsome bookcase.

The other book was the 1907 Glomerata. It has been rebound. It’s a generic black cover. No need to show you that, but what’s inside is also where the fun is.

I just spent a few minutes flipping through the 1907 book. The highest quality photos are the studio head shots and the posed group photos. There are a few candid action shots, but they are all small. It was a limitation of cameras 117 years ago. There are some cool drawings inside the older books. This one was on the page introducing the students who put the yearbook together.

That was done by a guy named F. Roy Duncan, a senior. His blurb in the yearbook says he learned to draw in an English class there, and I’m not sold on his proficiency as an artist, or as an English student. But he becomes a talented engineer and architect. Born in Columbus, Georgia, educated at Auburn. He worked in Pittsburgh, and then on the Panama Canal. It seems he stayed down there for about three years, contributing to electrical, mechanical and structural engineering projects. And then he returned to Columbus.

Some six years after that photo was taken at school, he became an architect. Among his achievements are more than a half-dozen homes still standing in various historical districts (here’s one), the Taylor County (Georgia) courthouse and parts of this Columbus church. They all survive him, as did his wife, and this art. He had a heart attack while fishing and died, at 61, in 1947.

And so we’re going to have to look at these books. And all of the rest of the collection, over time. Because I also recently picked up a nice desktop document camera. These were the first three photos I took with it, and I’m pleased. It’s a little slow and awkward as I figure out the workflow, but it seems much better than trying to take a photo on my phone, emailing it to myself and then editing thing. At the very least I’ve got out two steps in the process. And so, next week, I’ll open a book and point it at the camera.

I think I’ll probably start in the 1940s.

But first, I have to add these two covers to the Glomerata collection on the site.

(Four minutes elapse.)

There, now the 1907 and 1912 volumes have been added to my Gloms cover collection. I’ve just noticed four or five other covers which haven’t been digitized, but I’ll get to them soon. And, as of this writing, these are the only ones I need to add to the collection: 1899, 1900, 1902, 1905, 1906, 1909, 1911, 1913, 1915, 1916.

Beyond a certain point, as you can imagine, they are difficult to find.

I just wrote 800-plus words about things that are only of interest to me! Let’s show you some diving photos, which I know you’ve been waiting for, patiently, and get you in to your weekend.

There is absolutely positively nothing like just … hanging there in the water. It’s so captivating that I spend time on most dives just watching other people do it. Like my dive buddy!

This is a shot-from-the-hip of a woman that was on one of our dive boats with us. She just happened to float over, or I swam under, or whatever it was, and I looked up. I love these shots, and I include it here as a reminder to myself to take more of them, which can only be done by more diving.

Dive boat dynamics are interesting. Unless you go as a big unruly group you’re surrounded by strangers. These are two-tank dives, which means you go out, take the first dive, and then enjoy another, all without having to return to land. For safety reasons that have to do with the chemistry of your blood under the mild pressures involved with reef diving, you take a surface interval. So you wind up talking to people. And they’re often just fascinating. This dive had a bishop from Miami, a high powered business man from Denver, this woman, who is in pediatric medicine and, of course, us. Plus there’s the captain and the divemaster, who is an underwater welder doing this in his free time. That’s an awesome amount of brain power on one little vessel, and also me.

So you wind up having some interesting chats. Usually it’s about equipment, things you just saw, how your diving has been, something innocuous from back home. It’s small talk. And you’re all the best of friends.

Except now I can’t remember anyone’s names.

I don’t know if she got to see this turtle. Not everyone on that dive did. But that’s the breaks. Sometimes you see the high profile sea life, and other times you hear about it and appreciate what you were able to find. But we found this giant turtle.

That’s easily a three-foot shell. Easily.

OK, that’s enough for now. Enjoy your weekend! (We’re getting snow.)

Cozumel / cycling / photo / SCUBA / site / Thursday — Comments Off
15
Feb 24

It’s Spanish for “shark” (there’s a shark in the photos below)

Site news! I just sold this place! Some joker is buying it for $1.3 million and I’m cashing out! See ya, suckers!

That would be about what I’d say if that were true. And if Kenny “The Jet” Smith’s people want to call me — as we have a longstanding social relationship — which earned me a piece in a textbook a few years back …

Worth a shot.

No, here is the actual site news. The front page photos have been updated. It is now diving-themed once again. For example, a larger version of this photo is there.

There are 10 images in the current rotation. I’ll three rotations of 10 each for a while. That should keep us until the front page needs re-freshening with some other amazing photographs, or when The Jet buys me out, whichever comes first.

That was one of the things on the day’s list. Updating the front of the site, not selling out.

(Seriously, Jet, my number is 555 …)

There were eight things on that list when I closed my computer last night. And I managed to do six of those things today, and did some other work prep besides, so I am satisfied with the effort.

One thing I did, of course, was take a little bike ride down in the Smith Indoor Training Center. I did 66 minutes, which is about where my enthusiasm has dwindled the past few rides, come to think of it.

I did an actual training ride, today, an anaerobic capacity into VO2 exercise. I did this because I read a site recently which said that, without a training plan, I was just doing junk miles. Miles for miles’ sake. I was fine with that, of course, until someone put that particular name to it. My base miles are not junk. And they’ve come with some real exertion. But today I did this interval workout with five sets above my wattage threshold and set some new Strava PRs in the process. Behold! My phone!

I took Tuesday off from riding, opting for quality time, instead. It must have been the right choice because I didn’t feel bad about it, or second guess myself in the moment. Even still, today was my 20th ride in the last 21 days, which is a fair amount for a duffer like me.

On my cycling spreadsheet — everyone has one — I have a page that shows the best of each month. So I know what my most prolific July is, which year had the most miles in August, which September saw the most pedal strokes, and so on. (2011, 2023, 2014, respectively.) I have a separate column for February, because it’s February. And February of 2023 is my most successful year, for now. But that mark is going to get crushed, probably before the end of this week.

We’ll look back on this month and see the asterisk, but the asterisk will be about the leap day, definitely not about junk miles.

Meanwhile, back under water, since I told you about the front page updates and we’re still working our way through the photos from our last dive trip. I found one where my lovely dive buddy is actually demonstrating evidence of breathing.

The first rule of diving is just keep breathing. That’s actually a rule. I got quizzed on one of the dive boats because, someone has to be the fall guy and the divemaster asked me about the first rule. I said, “To make sure my partner comes back up. And also to keep breathing.”

I started diving at the beginning of the George H.W. Bush administration. That guy was just going to have to overlook my flip little joke.

Tortuga!

That’s Jennifer, one of the famous turtles of Palancar Reef. I believe she was trying to introduce us to her friend. Do you see that little overhang she seems to be working her way to there? Can you see what is underneath it?

Now you can.

Tiburón!

If you’ve been enjoying views from under the sea just off the coast of Cozumel, not to worry. I have a few dozen more photographs, and a lot of videos to work through.

Cozumel / history / markers / New Jersey / photo / SCUBA / We Learn Wednesdays / Wednesday — Comments Off
14
Feb 24

Some of these marker features are starting to come together

I only showed you a few of the flowers from the fresh cut collection currently adorning the house. In addition to the pretty purples, we have these delicate pink and white petals ready to spread their grandeur.

I’m choosing to see this as a sign, and a welcome one, that the pastels are on their way.

Meanwhile, in the basement arboretum, there are now three pink roses in bloom. Another plant also has two flowers on display. They seem to be sticking around for a good long while. It could be my imagination, or it could be the long grow light and light watering.

I’m going to have to carry those plants back up and outside eventually. There’s only eight of them, so it’ll be little trouble. But I’ll also have to clean up that part of the basement, too. That might be the one thing about the eventual run up to spring I’m dreading. It’ll take probably 10 minutes. But that’s still some ways off. Snow is in the forecast for the weekend.

It is time for another installment of We Learn Wednesdays. This is the 25th installment, so you know the premise by now. I ride my bike across the county to find the local historical markers. Right now, we’re working our way through a handful I stockpiled in late fall. These are the 45th and 46th markers we’ve seen in the series.

And this building has some proper history to it.

This side was altered in the last expansion, including the brick work, the Palladian windows and the porch. The cupola, hip roof and box cornice are original.

In 1774, the courthouse was the site of a county petition to King George III. In it, the locals discussed their colonial grievances. From here, they also sent county relief to Boston.

Judge William Hancock presided in the King’s Court of Common Pleas. As we learned last October, Hancock’s property, about five miles away, was at the center of a skirmish during the harsh winter of 1778. The British were foraging on this side of a creek, and the colonials on the other side. The redcoats crossed the water and fixed bayonets. When they came upon Hancock’s house, the British entered through the front and the back, and killed the small detachment of militia men there that night, 20 or so, according to the British commander. But also killed was Judge Hancock.

That same year, the courthouse held the treason trials. Four locals were tried and convicted and sentenced to death for helping the British soldiers in that raid. They were pardoned by the governor and exiled. The governor would eventually sign the U.S. Constitution.

The oldest courthouse, by the way, is in Virginia, and it is only a decade older. But the first courthouse here was even older. A building that they believe was made of logs, was the local legal center dating back to 1692. And they paper records from hearings that are dated 1706. But if it’s the still-standing buildings, the Virginia courthouse has the honors, but that pile of bricks in Virginia doesn’t have this bit of trivia.

The Salem courthouse is the site of the legend of Robert Gibbon Johnson. Here he stood before an amazed crowd eating tomatoes, proving they are edible.

Col. Johnson announced that he would eat a tomato, also called the wolf peach, Jerusalem apple or love apple, on the steps of the county courthouse at noon. … That morning, in 1820, about 2000 people were jammed into the town square. … The spectators began to hoot and jeer. Then, 15 minutes later, Col. Johnson emerged from his mansion and headed up Market Street towards the Courthouse. The crowd cheered. The fireman’s band struck up a lively tune. He was a very impressive-looking man as he walked along the street. He was dressed in his usual black suit with white ruffles, black shoes and gloves, tricorn hat, and cane. At the Court House steps he spoke to the crowd about the history of the tomato. … He picked a choice one from a basket on the steps and held it up so that it glistened in the sun. … “To help dispel the tall tales, the fantastic fables that you have been hearing … And to prove to you that it is not poisonous I am going to eat one right now”… There was not a sound as the Col. dramatically brought the tomato to his lips and took a bite. A woman in the crowd screamed and fainted but no one paid her any attention; they were all watching Col. Johnson as he took one bite after another. … He raised both his arms, and again bit into one and then the other. The crowd cheered and the firemen’s band blared a song. … “He’s done it”, they shouted. “He’s still alive!”

Great story. Pure fiction. It was written in the 1940s, punched up twice more in that decade for books and radio. And so on. In the 1980s, the locals did a reenactment. In 1988, Good Morning America took it to heart and reported this apocryphal first.

Everybody knew about tomatoes.

Where that crowd would have supposedly stood there are some pavers on the ground. And here is another marker, and an absent piece of history. This marker says “Il Sannito. Forged in Naples, Italy in 1763.” There’s a list of the groups who’s donations made a restoration possible. And notes that it was re-dedicated on October 30, 2013, to commemorate the cannon’s “250th birthday.”

And that cannon could really blow out some candles, let me tell you. Il Sannito isn’t in place, but one of its sister cannons is, and we met it in September. There were three cannons, originally. The Italians made them, but Napoleon collected them in one of his battles. The French fought with them, until they lost them to the British and then the British lost them to the Americans in the War of 1812. The state militia got them sometime after that. These two have been on display in local towns, the third one is just … gone.

And where is Il Sannito? There are not, and this will come as a surprise to you as it did to me, not a lot of mentions of 18th century Italian metalworks in the middle of a 21st century town not too far removed from being a news desert. From a photo on the Historical Marker Database and Google Maps’ street view, I can tell you it was removed again between July of 2020 and April of 2023. But that’s all I know as of this writing. This is what it looks like, so if you see any cannons behaving suspiciously … drop me a line.

Next week, we’ll walk around the side of the old courthouse. I bet we’ll find a marker there. If you’ve missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

Let’s wrap up this day with a trip back under the water. Look! A mermaid!

Seriously, she does not breathe. I don’t know how she manages that. I started looking for gills on this dive trip.

I started looking, but then I got distracted by this tortuga.

That’s a photo taken through the video recording on my underwater camera. Distressingly, the secondary function of my video camera which shoots underwater is not of a terribly high quality.

Here’s an actual photo. Same tortuga.

A version of that photo is going on the site’s front page eventually. The first updates on that are coming tomorrow. Be sure to swing back by and check that out. And if you come back to the blog tomorrow, you’ll see more of that turtle, and a few other neat things as well.