Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Ungrounded thoughts

Much progress was made today on my Digital Media Processes class. This class is about the concepts and structures that drive our social media and their uses. I have taught this class seven times, but always online. This semester I was tasked with teaching it in person. Same material, different paces and styles and everything else. We wanted to put more of our online classes in the classroom, hence this transition, and the extra work on a class I know pretty well.

Today I counted the 28 pages of calendars and notes that comprise my preparation. This does not include actual class notes.

It is possible that I’m overthinking it.

(Next spring I am scheduled to teach it online again.)

Anyway, after a bunch of hours with it today, yesterday, and this weekend and however much else, I’m down to three things on my To Do list for that class. This is, without diving into the details when we’re already 150 words in, significant progress.

Here’s my daily lunch koan. I have a Trader Joe’s burrito for lunch each day. They come in packages of two, but I separate them for rationing purposes. And if you’ll note this rather large part of the dietary label on the packaging …

Did I eat the 490 calorie burrito today? Or did I eat the 500 calorie burrito today?

To be sure, they are different. They’re no doubt hand made because each one offers the possibility of a different flavor profile. There are three variables, really. It could be spicy, or not. It could be soft, as you would expect a burrito to be, or the tortilla could be, or the shell can sometimes be a bit tougher or even crunchy. This even though I heat it the same each time: slightly damp napkin, 1:45 on this side, and 1:45 on that side. Finally, when you open the package, if you look at both, it seems obvious that one is just a tiny bit larger than the other. I don’t know what 10 calories look like, of course, but I’m forced to make conclusions here.

If that conclusion is correct, I’ll be eating the 500 calorie burrito tomorrow.

I went outside in the evening, because I had to get away from work. I had to get away from work because I found myself thinking a few paragraphs on burrito differentiation would be an interesting read.

I’ve been thinking about what it is that we value in our day-to-day lives. I’ve really been thinking about how to add valuable things, or value. OK, I’ve actually been thinking about how to separate the required from the desired. I have been thinking about this for 20-something years with no great results, but I have optimism that a great realizations will come my way, somehow, in the first few days of this week.

I sat outside and made myself a weekly schedule for the semester. I’m trying to lock off time for work and time for not doing work. That’s reasonable. Achievable. I don’t work 24/7, obviously. I’m not pulling 80 hour weeks here, like I did two jobs ago. Nor am I doing two people’s jobs as a way to help out with no added personal benefit (but in fact criticism) as has also been the case in other places and times. There’s a big push with my employer to have some work-life balance, even though we should dissolve that terrible phrase in a vat of acid. I do my work and sometimes it feels like my share and sometimes it feels like a little less and sometimes it is perhaps a little more. It all works out in the end, I have no problem with the ebbs and flows of things, natural rhythms are both inescapable and a feature of the work. I can also be happy in doing good work, because I can see the value in it. I’m pleased with all of that. It’s nice if others see value in it, too.

What I’d like to do is turn it off when the circumstances allow for it. This I have never figured out how to do. I’d like to not spend all of my time thinking about the particulars, or the next thing that needs to be done, or this theory or that technique or this pedagogy or that paper. (Or, previously, the next production, or the next meeting, or the next call sheet or the last newscast, the good lead, the bad interview from last Tuesday, and so on.) I can do pretty good work at work. I’d like to be personally better at drawing lines between that and everything else.

I teach about identity a lot. (Here I go again, even now.) And this, I think, figures into it. But that’s not all of it. And, anyway, I need to go do more things like stare at the sky or the rock wall or listen to nothing or pursue any of the other things that I find interesting. I feel compelled to try to set aside times to do the things I want. Have we all become appointment hobbyists? Are we otherwise to be overbooked by the upcoming and ennui? And if I set aside an hour a day to read, and two hours a week to do this other, and sprinkle in some smaller things here and there, can I mentally remove myself from work for some of that time? That’s what I’ve been thinking about. This is not a mid-life crisis — because, again, my whole professional life I’ve had this little challenge. That’s what it is, a little personal challenge. Certainly it is not a crisis. It is pattern recognition, and a realization that sometimes patterns can be confounded. If you —

Oh look at this!

That plane is going to London. I sat next to the shrubs and the long bladed grass things and watched three planes go by, hoping to see just one more plane reflect the sunset off its fuselage. Sun: nature’s livery. I saw one. Missed a photograph of it. And, anyway, that’s just off my phone and this particular flight path has them circling over us, from about two miles away, and climbing through several thousand feet. My phone’s camera is no match for that. But, then again, my DSLR can’t tell me that plane is going to London, that the previous one was headed to Portland, Maine, or that the one before that was bound for Edinburgh.

I was thinking about all of this while watching those planes fly threw and some left-sided corner of my brain said to the rest of me, “I should sit under those bushes and watch more planes fly by.” The rest of my brain laughed at the idea.

Tomorrow I’m going to wrap up the DMP class. (Probably.) I need to double-check my recent work on the org comm class to reassure myself it is in good shape. And then start in on these other courses. And, also, the above. Maybe tomorrow i’ll figure it out.

cycling / Monday / photo / Rowan — No comments
17
Aug 26

And now the harder things

One of the good things about teaching nearly every class under the sun these last few years is that when a friend needs a course outline in a pinch I have something. I received a text message like that last night and was able to provide three different schedules in a matter of minutes. I spent the rest of the night trying different versions of “How can I help?” Being helpful is the easy thing; convincing people to make use of it is a harder thing.

Another almost hard thing is a mental challenge. Today the spring schedule was released. I haven’t yet finished preparing, or re-preparing as the case may be, the fall term. On the most important hand, knowing my spring whereabouts five months in advance is the way this is supposed to work. I’ve had semesters where that wasn’t the case. It’s like the dream where you walk into a room unprepared, with the wrong book in hand, and with no pants, and the fear of that sensation for four months. On the other hand, one thing at a time, sir or ma’am. On the third hand, things are always subject to change with little, or no, notice.

Some good progress was made today for my second fall class. The immersion of dates and tasks and concepts is such that I will soon wonder if the first class, which I think I’ve completed, is complete. Convincing myself is the hardest thing of all.

Saturday my lovely bride invited me to chase her on a bicycle. She’s riding well and I’m riding poorly and so this was a kind gesture on her part and, ultimately, a vain effort on my part. She wanted to get in 25 miles, so I chose the time trial route, because I think I ride a little better on that route. I gave her something to chase, sneaking peeks over my shoulder and saying to myself “Let me hang on for eight miles,” and I did. I said to myself, “Let me hang on for 10 miles,” and I did. And I said to myself, “Let me hang on until I get over this overpass.” This is where, on a previous ride, she went by me at such a great turn of speed it made a noise. I heard a woooo, and then looked to my left and there she was, and suddenly in front of me before the oooosh was fully formed.

I’ve been passed by a lot of fast people and I’d never had an experience quite like that. I didn’t want that experience again on Saturday, so I said to myself “Let me hang on until I get over this overpass.” And I did.

Then I said to myself, “Let me find a bag of abandoned cash that is not traceable that I can just carry home from here.”

That one didn’t come true, though I did see a bucket on the side of the road and I peered into it carefully. That was just after she passed and quickly dropped me. I got dropped because I was looking in that bucket, or so I told myself for the last seven or eight miles of the route, when the excuse came to mind.

It was sunny and hot and I went through three bottles of water on the bike, and then had another bottle and change when I finally got home. Not pictured: the truck that passed too close on the last bit of my ride.

Sunday afternoon I went out for a deliberately slow ride, leaving the county without ceremony, but returning to the county with a Welcome a sign. So that’s two counties. And then, eventually, a third county.

This was a simple out-and-back route, retracing my pedal strokes means two more counties. A six county-line-ride! All of that without passing a single gas station or store or restaurant. There’s a lot of pretty fields, though. Pastures and crops. Horses and goats and horses.

And also corn.

At one point, from the other direction, there was a guy riding a dirt bike. Something seemed not quite right. As he got closer I realized it looked weird because he was riding a wheelie. Also, he was standing on the seat. There was a car following a little too close behind him for this sort of thing, but these are the choices other people make. The rider looked very calm and comfortable in this position, but I spent a while wondering: How does he get down when this trick is done? Now I wonder: How do you figure that out the first time?

Anyway, my ride was just 22.5 miles out, until the road finally makes a T intersection. The point of this route is no turns, which means I don’t miss a turn, which is a good thing in this instance because, if you’ll note those clouds …

Near my turn-around point I went by this building. Mr. Terry O’Neill, Sr., died just last month at 84.

He worked in oil and asphalt. He worked in the local government, in public works, for a decade. He served on his local township committee, on a 911 advisory board and was the president of groups like the local little league. He was a volunteer firefighter for almost 60 years. He remortgaged his home, as did some of the other volunteers, to help build the firehouse, a simple three-bay shop that safeguards the northern side of his town. It’s the kind of place where there’s a sign out front advertising the community breakfast. How many times must you go to the firehouse before you don’t think about what you did, the challenge you put on your family, the gift you’ve given your neighbors? Maybe you don’t think about that for forever, or on those times when you are hustling in so you can roll out to a call, but there must be a special kind of pride and hope that comes with a gift like that. He must have been quite the man.

Above all else, Terry was a devoted husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, friend and neighbor. He led by example, giving generously of his time, his talents and his heart. His kindness, quiet strength, steadfast faith and enduring love for his family and community will be remembered always and his legacy will continue to inspire all who had the privilege of knowing him.

He and his wife have 22 great-grandchildren. Seems like a life well-lived.

Going by that shop the second time, there was a gentle uptick in speed. Finally, a gentle downhill slope to the overall ride, at least for a time. Also, I finally had a tailwind. The humidity sank in, forcing a stop to clear away the sweat from my eyes. Gray skies and sprinkles gave way to a proper rain in the last five miles of the ride, leaving me plenty of time to get soaked.

It was a pleasant 45-mile route. Not pictured, the white SUV which almost drove into me head-on.

It rained the rest of the evening. I sat still, staring at class notes, until it was time to take the garbage to the curb, in the rain. Easiest job of all!

errands / Friday / photo / site — No comments
14
Aug 26

Do you know praying mantis?

Sometimes strategies that you develop turn out to be accurate. There’s always the possibility you’re wrong, or you misread a situation or a third alternative arises. But sometimes you get it right. In this deliberately obscure case a time management strategy I’ve been employing has worked in my favor. So, go me? The thing about patting yourself on the back about barely referenced strategies is that you can’t count on the next one just because you were right on the last one. That’s just hubris and it will eventually catch up to you. Or me, in this case. And where will you/I be with the much ballyhooed time management choices then, huh?

You’ll spend all of your time searching and stretching for a metaphor that explains the thing without explaining the thing, thinking that one day, some seven or eight years from now, you’ll come across this post again and recall and know exactly what was going on here. You will not. I will not, in this case. I think exactly one time in the decades-long history of the site is there an allusion to something unsaid that I can recall and regard as important. And it was! And you’ll never find it, because I’m not telling.

(I wrote three paragraphs of a personal anecdote I like, one of those recollections-of-a-life-lesson I taught myself in 2003 or so, and I included the phrase “lightning bolt and thunderclap of clarity,” because I’m proud of that realization. It was an important story and a great lesson, but doesn’t fit here, so I deleted it and you are welcome.)

I woke up roughly on time this morning and made my way downstairs and outside. Parts of the southern side of the house and the gardens there are still shaded a bit, and I needed the shade to crawl around on hands and knees and do more weeding. I plucked at grasses and mints for about two hours.

I made a friend.

For a few moments, we did a bob-and-weave dance together. The insect craned its neck this way and that. I did it in response, then the mantis did it again. Then I did it again. Mid-way through the third round the insect got bored of it. But, I felt, we’d bonded in that time.

Then I felt bad about ripping up all of the green things upon which it had been living its best life. But it scurried off, headed for another patch of growth I wasn’t going to pull up. Other insects and greener pastures and all of that.

One year and one day ago I met this guy on the northern side of the house. I wonder if they are related.

How often do various insect groups have family reunions? I only took one entomology course in college and, I must confess, that did not come up. If I had undergrad to do over again, I definitely would not ask about that.

Late this afternoon, after pretending to do some computer work, I took all of the fruits of my weeding, five giant bags over four sweaty hours, and loaded them into the car to take them to the county’s drop off site. I drove there, smelling of decaying green things, and dropped them off. Usually there is a crowd, maybe even a line, but there was only one other vehicle there as the Friday closing hour loomed. I gave the bags the ol’ heave-ho without making a mess of things and then climbed back in the car.

This is my favorite part of the recycling and waste run. There is a little building that sits in the lot and the man that runs the place, when he’s not outside moving stuff around or doing the other things he does, sits in there. You can’t see into the building because of the light and glare, but I also give it a little wave. Here I’ve been working on my uninterested-but-thankful expression. A fixed lip, a nod, a casual wave, and then down the gravel drive, onto the road and that chore is done. Until the next time the chore must be done, and I will try another version of that wave. Maybe three fingers next time.

I went over to one of the local grocery stores, picked up a few things, and then pointed toward home, where I almost got in a tangle with the driver of this vehicle.

It’s a company car, and the driver was rather aggressive. I followed him a bit as he weaved through town and near a school zone at high rates of speed. Soon, I caught him at a light where the road allowed me to go past him and better see the company logo. And don’t you know I looked them up. It’s a local concern. They work on restaurants and businesses and commercial remodels. I sent the family-owned business an email, sharing the license plate, telling them the driver was erratic and dangerous on their insurance and, what’s more, with a great big company log on the side of the van. “That’s probably not the word of mouth you want,” I concluded. “Certainly it isn’t the risk the rest of us should accept from your company.”

That felt like a good way to end a Friday. I hope it is an issue for someone in their office on Monday.

memories / photo / Thursday / video — No comments
13
Aug 26

Commitment to topicality

I have now locked down the prep for one half of one of my classes. Unless I am forgetting something, every concept will be less than 50 years old and almost every example will be from the 21st century. It is this commitment to topicality for which I am known.

Doing this part of the work was fairly easy, owing to the class already being in place and some of the work I’ve already done to set up today’s effort. Easy enough that, maybe I should just go ahead and finish the thing right now.

Naaaaaaah.

OK, fine. You’ve convinced me. Be right back.

[…]

[Some two hours elapse]

I did it. I blame you, and appreciate the nudge, because of which my org comm class’ structural prep is now complete. Now I must simply refine the lectures which I’ll do as we move through the term, staying eight days ahead of the class, if I am lucky.

But that nudge, that guilt-tripping nudge, that rolling-your-eyes glare, has done the hardest thing to do this time of year: build momentum.

Now I must complete the work for two other courses. One of them has a To Do list with seven items (some of them still require some thought and decision-making on my part). But there’s always tomorrow, this weekend, and next week. The other class has one item on the To List. It reads: Everything. Tomorrow, this weekend, next week.

This morning I made the mistake of looking out a window. I was prepared, as I had prepared myself in sliding out of bed, readying myself to meet the day, and going downstairs, to look out of one of the kitchen windows to admire yesterday’s handiwork. Weeding was done. Two hours, much sweat, and still sore hands, but the weeding was done. And so I looked and realized that, in the patch directly below this window, I’d only concentrated on the truly obnoxious stuff. Where I should see a big patch of deep and rich browns and blacks, there are still some offending sprinkles of green undesirables.

Well, Saturday. Maybe Friday. Those two days we’ll only get up to about 87 degrees, if the forecast is anything which can be believed anymore. (Some days are more questionable than others, thanks to rank policy changes that will in no way impact us on a daily basis.) I will go back out there, do the shuffle-bend-and-squat, and pull up some more stuff. Also, I will deploy the weed eater to work around some of the features of the yard. We purchased a battery-powered trimmer last year. The guy said the battery would run about 45 minutes. I figured that, given a few experiments, I could figure out a way to get all of my trimming done in under 45 minutes. And, if not, that’s just a sign to go inside and ~~rest~~ charge up the battery anyway. If there’s one thing we all know about weeds, they are patiently persistent. No second expensive battery needed.

I figured I’d use it twice a year, but you know what? I’ve enjoyed breaking out the trimmer this year. Also, I have found it necessary. It is efficient, it works fast, and it helps.

I will also deploy the hedge trimmer. There’s one shrub in particular that has gotten out of control. I might also need to haul the ladder into the mix for this task. There’s nothing as safe as using electric-powered dual-action shearing blades while leaning well out from a six-foot rung on a ladder.

Guaranteed, doing that will take less time than the set up and tear down.

Trimming hedges is an oddly satisfying chore, perhaps because I’ve never hurt myself on the thing. Bringing something into a desired shape is fun. Removing the cuttings are less so. For may years I have used the tarp-as-drop-cloth technique, where you tried to land most of the branches and leaves on the tarp and then pour them into a yard bag. Earlier this year I tried landing them into an oversized plastic bin. That worked somewhat. The cleanup depends on the type of shrub, and that should absolutely figure into your next shrubbery purchase: How much of a problem is this going to be next year? Species, I’ve got thoughts on all of ’em.

We watched Thunderbolts last night. Did it the old fashioned way, turned out all the lights and peered into a TV screen that doesn’t show blacks very well and wondered why so many movies have dark scenes. (I’m pretty sure it is a budget-saving, drama-heightening concept.) This was a deliberately unbalanced movie. Delightful in places. Halting and evocative of “What Dreams May Come” in other places. All of that fits in with the overarching theme. It suffers, however, in the antagonist area. Any action movie that needs an abstraction as an antagonist is going to have a struggle.

From IMDB:

The fifth lowest-grossing MCU film worldwide, after The Marvels (2023), The Incredible Hulk (2008), Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), and Black Widow (2021). These are the only five MCU films to gross under $400 million worldwide.

The web tells me today, because I looked it up, that a sequel is in the works. The Marvels is an overlooked film. (Iman Vellani is brilliant.) Of course, you can’t have much of what follows (this was the 32nd movie in the MCU) without a long bet on the supposedly underperforming Captain America. The movie business is a weird business like that.

Then again, they’re just following the music business, which is even more demanding with its bottom line repercussions. This is not a new realization, of course, but you can be reminded of it with literally any followup album or musician’s story. And, as luck would have it, we watched the first installment of the two-part Billy Joel documentary this evening.

Imagine having a guy under contract that had produced The Piano Man and not being certain, for six more years, that you had a hit maker on your hands. That’s the record business. Seems obvious in retrospect, but the first half of this documentary has been “I do stupid stuff a lot, my childhood, my early career … and finally we all realized I was a star.”

So we saw the first 15 years of the five-album overnight success in part one. We’ll meet Christie Brinkley in part two, I’m sure.

Two years ago we saw Joel’s 101st concert at Madison Square Garden. (She was there, too.) The year prior he announced that he would end that historic run on his 104th show. And so my thought was that this was an important opportunity to see an event, one of the last few remaining. It was a happening that broke out into a pretty great show.

We sat way up high, well off to the side, and had a great time watching him mug for the camera.

Appreciating longevity is the gift of the moment. No one listening to “You May Be Right” and “It’s Still Rock And Roll To Me” in 1980 would have counted on concluding an MSG run 45 years later. (They’d only just discovered nostalgia in 1972, after all.) We’ve all been a part of a different kind of topical commitment, really.

memories / Philadelphia / photo / site / sport / Wednesday — Comments Off
12
Aug 26

I can see mulch and top soil again

What a fine day. Productive and rewarding in several senses, but not in all of them. One can’t be productive in every sense. We weren’t designed for that. How else would we have developed imagination, hope, and ambition? How else would we have ever learned to fly, go to space, develop life saving vaccines, study the planet and what we’re doing to it? If we could do everything all at once, how would we have internalized concepts like dreams, lists, and ways to judge our neighbors against our efforts? Someone had to have the idea of emulating the birds, and s/he and their ilk were scorned for generations, until one day it wasn’t a flight of fancy, it was a flight. And you couldn’t do that or go to space or any of our other marvels, really, without the ability to create and pursue lists. We’re talking about human pursuit here! You can’t pursue everything at once. The neighbors would stare and talk.

I hope not too many people are doing that around here, because we’ve given them something to judge of late. There’s a lot of weeding to be done, but it’s been so deliriously hot. The temperatures settled into the low 90s today, however, and I went outside in the morning and pulled things out of the ground for a while.

My first job was a summertime thing working for one of my teachers. She was a horticulturist, and she had a summer side hustle landscaping one of the big houses on the mountain. The husband was a surgeon. A plastic surgeon, I think. Or a heart surgeon. Something that set him up well enough to marry a woman who descended from old money. (People knew the family name.) It was a gorgeous house, made to look ancient by the stone work that didn’t come from our red clay hills. It had a commanding view of the city in the valley below, the city her family had left a few generations before. The city where her family name was on one of the skyscrapers downtown, which you could see standing at their sink, or at their pool, or in any part of the house that looked to the northwest. They had a Rolls Royce Phantom 2 in the garage, giant oil paintings of themselves in the foyer that was, itself, bigger than any house I’d ever seen. And they had landscaping needs that meant after we’d worked our way across the whole of the yard it was time to go back to the other side and start again. I was in the 8th grade and it was incredibly hot and that job taught me a lot, namely that I didn’t want to do that kind of work. My teacher also taught me about Tracy Chapman that summer. Everyone knew Fast Car, but she talked about that debut album and the followup, Crossroads and how somehow that had inspired her to go into the Peace Corps. That didn’t make sense at the time, but I guess I can see it now.

Anyway, I was thinking about that today, pulling weeds in my own flowerbeds, stuffing lawn bags and sweating and listening to Tracy Chapman. I was also hoping none of the neighbors would walk by, notice me doing all that and giving me the nod of disapproval.

“About time he got around to that.”

“The last owners would have never.”

“No they would not.”

Yeah, well, they had kids and I’m guessing the children got sent out to do their share of the work. Or they hired someone. We’ve done that. It’s been … spotty. Sometimes great. Sometimes aggressive. Sometimes questionable.

Anyway, one man did walk by and, even across the yard, you could hear that he was on the phone. I paused to listen, wondering if he’d say “He’s actually doing it. I know. I know! No really, he is!”

I didn’t get it all today. I don’t know that I can, or want to get it all. Pretty much the entire Tracy Chapman catalog is great, much of it peerless, but it would need to be much larger for me to get of this weeding finished. Plus, there’s other work to be done. But there are things on the southern side of the house that I didn’t want to get choked out by undesirables, so I did that for a while, until it was time to come in and cool off. Because while it was only 88 degrees, I still managed to do a credible sweat test this morning. But two hours, noon, 88 degrees, and three comically large bags of now dead green things are ready to be disposed of. The bulk of the work on the south side of the house is done. I could still probably pull weeds for another hour there, plus a good 20 minute weed-eating session. But enough is enough.

Also, we had afternoon plans.

A while back we met a man at a conference who runs this development program for kids where soccer is the entryway, but they’re ultimately working to create scenarios where preschool through high school kids and beyond can build healthy bodies and minds. They have an indoor park, outdoor fields and people show up for the soccer, but find a full slate of programming and services for their community. It sounds amazing and so today we went to see the operation.

There was some high school pick-up soccer underway on their indoor pitch. No one invited me to play, thank goodness. We saw the rest of their facilities, which are lovely and growing. It’s not a community center, it’s more than that. We talked with the people that run the place for about 90 minutes. They’re six years in and still growing and doing some great work. It’s not just sport. Sport gets kids in the door, but then there is programming that helps the children learn about things like nutrition, interpersonal skills, money management, confidence building, and so on. They aren’t trying to build soccer players, the goal is to help kids in ways that matter on a real and human level. It’s quite charming, they’re very passionate about it, and it’s easy to see why.

Sport, as we talk about in classes a lot, means a lot more than just what happens on the field. In one class I teach a section on the real values of youth sport — fair play, collaboration, health, socialization, discipline, rules, respect, etc… — and that’s what this organization is after, too. What’s really interesting, to me, when I talk about those life lessons with other people that played youth sports, even college students who aren’t that far removed from it themselves, they quickly see how it helped them. We don’t always realize it at the time, but it is apparent in retrospective. It is obvious the value we can offer people. It is a mystery there aren’t more deliberate programs just like that.

And when you compare that to the infamous travel ball experience … no contest.

Stuff on the site I’d like to do, since I mentioned it … There are two or three of the old running projects I’d like to return to, and I will. I have to wrap up the local markers project. Easy enough, and that’s the one I combine with bike rides anyway. When the weather turns. I want to return to the happy habit of scanning photos from old books. It’s time intensive, and that’s the problem, but ultimately it entertains me and makes this place look, determined to follow ancient thing.

Another thing I’d like to do more is diving into old newspaper clippings. It’s a great way to learn about a place, or remember about a place. But it seems odd to do that about places where I no longer live. And the place where I do live doesn’t have a wealth of digitized newsprint online. This could devolve into a “where do you belong?” paragraph, but this is Wednesday and while all of my projects on the site ideally would have a day of the week, roughly, the old existential issue is not a Wednesday item. (Wednesdays are for markers, if you’ll recall, and they will be so once again.

These projects one need only invest the time and I say the thing I always say to myself, “After so and so … then you can do that.” And that never changes, but it at least has the added advantage of being frustrating.

Tomorrow, back to the classwork. If I can bend my fingers to the keyboard.