{"id":573896337,"date":"2023-11-02T21:59:27","date_gmt":"2023-11-03T01:59:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/?p=573896337"},"modified":"2023-11-04T03:42:35","modified_gmt":"2023-11-04T07:42:35","slug":"on-your-yellow-bucket-seat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2023\/11\/02\/on-your-yellow-bucket-seat\/","title":{"rendered":"‘On your yellow bucket seat’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today was Copeland Cookie Day<\/a> in my classes. (And so was Monday.) Dr. Gary Copeland was a professor of mine. He retired soon after my cohort, and he passed away not too long after that. He didn’t get enough time with his beloved grandchildren, and no one got enough time with a widely beloved man. He was a giant of a scholar, a sweet-hearted man who always did a lot for his students. <\/p>\n

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In one class, he’d bring cookies, put away the syllabus and talk about whatever seemed important: conferences, papers, dealing with colleagues. A lot of the most important things we learned came from that non-class. <\/p>\n

Because of that, that’s why I have a Copeland Cookie Day. I bring in snacks, put aside the plans and, for a few minutes, we just talk about industry, courses, war stories, whatever. <\/p>\n

After classes were over we went for a run. It was too late in the day for a run. It was too late, which made it too cold. So I only did a quick mile, but I did see this part of the far side of the sunset.<\/p>\n

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I need to find my running gloves. And start dressing better than shorts and a t-shirt. ‘Tis the season, and all. Only, I have no idea where my running gloves are. I knew where they were<\/em>, in a drawer, right by the refrigerator. But that was in the old house. And that was in June<\/a>, in the chaos of packing our stuff when the packers no-showed, and when it was the middle of summer when gloves weren’t exactly a priority. <\/p>\n

Where are they now? No idea, but mother nature is a necessity.<\/p>\n

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Since we’re at the beginning of the month, let’s look at the year’s cycling graph. <\/p>\n

The blue line represents mileage I would accrue if I road seven miles a day, a basically arbitrary number I picked at the beginning of the year when I started this spreadsheet. Seven miles, on average, seemed doable. <\/p>\n

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Then I added columns, and lines, for nine and 10 miles per day. That’s why those three lines are nice and steady, daily projections are consistent, steady, reassuring. <\/p>\n

But that purple line, that’s the one that reflects my actual mileage. <\/p>\n

As I say so often, I need to ride more. Tomorrow, then.<\/p>\n

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But tonight, we dive back into the Re-Listening project. I’m playing all of my old CDs in the car, and in the order in which I acquired them. Right now, we’re in the summer of of 2003, when Guster’s “Keep It Together,” their fourth studio album, was released. <\/p>\n

This is the first Guster album where the Thunder God, Brian Rosenworcel, played on a drum kit rather than his legendary hand percussion. <\/p>\n

A bunch of musician’s musicians — Ron Aniello, Ben Kweller, Joe Pisapia, Josh Rouse and more — appear on the record, which peaked at number 35 on the Billboard Top 200. Thirteen tracks, I like 12 of them, and I love 11 of them. It’s a record that comes up a lot for me, and so the flashes of memories span, well, two decades now. <\/p>\n

This is the first track, which was a trippy departure to hear as the first sounds on the thing. <\/p>\n