{"id":573898962,"date":"2026-05-08T20:09:48","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T00:09:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/?p=573898962"},"modified":"2026-05-23T11:19:18","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T15:19:18","slug":"a-few-steps-closer-to-summer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kennysmith.org\/wordpress\/blog\/2026\/05\/08\/a-few-steps-closer-to-summer\/","title":{"rendered":"A few steps closer to summer"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canvas, the platform the university uses for its online coursework, has returned to form. Came back late last night. This was only a problem because we’re in the middle of finals. Canvas died right in the middle of one of my final windows, in fact. The real problem was that the platform was hacked. There are secondary concerns. Did Instructure pay off the hackers? What got inserted into the code? Why did it just come back? Why didn’t the university’s IT people caution caution with returning to the thing? Why do we submit ourselves to annual training, and daily dual authentication processes, if as soon as this primary platform comes back the email just says, “It’s back!”<\/p>\n

It said a little more, that email, but not much. <\/p>\n

Anyway, I received the last few exams — they’re exams, but I’ve been calling them papers, my apologies — from the class that had their final window interrupted. I gave my online class an extra day to get their final projects and their exams in. Canvas was down for about eight hours, they got a 24-hour extension. Seemed fair.<\/p>\n

It’ll all be fine, the finals I mean. Those are important IT questions that, hopefully, someone is answering.<\/p>\n

It’s been a full day of it, but I’m hoping that, before tonight is done, I’ll have finished assessing 48 of those finals. Just 96 to go. (Guess what I’ll be doing this weekend!)<\/p>\n

The cats are, helpfully, not helping with the grading. Sometimes they very much want to be involved. But, lately, Phoebe has been working on a new skill. <\/p>\n

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Poseidon climbs down to hit, or he muscles and claws his way up it. I’m not sure if he’s jumped to it. Phoebe has learned to climb onto now too. And where Poe looks so proud, Phoebe shifts into “So what? Now what?” pretty quickly. <\/p>\n

Poe, for his part, has been taking seriously his new role as weatherproofing. <\/p>\n

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That’s the door to the garage, which we use a fair amount. When he doesn’t want you to go, you get a whole routine out of this now. It’s adorable. You just have to build in an additional 30 seconds of prep time to deal with him. <\/p>\n

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I wrote a little something, highlighting 10 Sports stories worth watching<\/a>:<\/p>\n

If your team isn’t in the thick of a postseason run you might be up for a little change of pace. Or, if the playoffs are too much, this could be just what you need to break the tension. Watch these 10 sports documentaries celebrating their 10th anniversary this year. See them for the first time. See them again for the first time. In chronological order, they are …<\/p>\n

Keepers of the Game<\/a> is about the members of an all-Native American girls lacrosse team fighting for acceptance on every level: within the tribe, at their school, and in the larger community. They want to play a game that was historically a boys\u2019 and men\u2019s game, they do this with no financial support from their school system, and against a heated rival who looms large on the schedule. It starts slow, but it becomes downright cinematic. Keepers of the Game was an official selection at the Tribeca Film Festival. It was nominated for an Emmy, won an award at Cannes and, in just 88 minutes allows us to see sometimes hesitant kids become confident athletes. Isn\u2019t that what we want out of youth sports?<\/p>\n

The Cleveland sports curse persisted for 52 years, a dry spell running from 1964 to 2016. (So if your teams aren’t in playoff contention right now, it could be worse.) Believeland<\/a> aired in May of 2016. ESPN was hoping to cash in before King James inevitably rendered all the footage obsolete. The Cavs won the 2016 NBA Finals just 32 days later after it aired. A few weeks later, ESPN aired a version with a new ending, the exciting 3-1 come-from-behind series win. Between Believeland and the Cavs triumph, though, local man Stipe Miocic won the UFC Heavyweight Championship and the American Hockey League’s Lake Erie Monsters won the Calder Cup. We leave it to you to decide which was the greater inspiration for the Cavaliers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There are eight more documentaries in that piece, all of them are good, several of them are truly great.<\/p>\n

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I’m still living in the happy memories of our wonderful Irish vacation. So, I’m sharing extra videos that we didn’t get to at the time. It was a great vacation. I have a lot of footage. This will go on for some time. Enjoy it with me, won’t you?<\/p>\n