Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Right, back in the tundra

See? Very quick trip. We landed in the frozen and still not melted north before noon yesterday. Plenty of time to get some work done before the big game, and a lot of time to lament this just, ya know, still everywhere.

Maybe it’ll melt by next weekend, at which point we’ll be three weeks into this snow and ice.

It’s a little excessive, as all.

And very boring.

The wedding Saturday night was anything but. We planned leaving the hotel in time to get there and get a good seat. But you never know about traffic and it was nuts. The Uber driver said it was nuts. We agreed it was nuts. The ceremony was four miles from the hotel and you could have grow a peanut vine to maturity and harvest the peanuts in the amount of time it took to get there. And the drive mad some Herculean efforts. His second alternate route got us there, and got us there just in time. And so we saw the mother of the groom come down the aisle and heard everyone react to her dress, which was gorgeous.

She was the unmitigated star of the day, and everybody liked it that way, even her son. The ceremony was brief, but well done. The officiant had babysat the groom way back when. And the whole day was full of little circular little stories like that. The wedding cake was surrounded by the mother’s wedding skirts, which have become a family history as much as an heirloom. Everyone in their family gets their name embroidered in it when they get married. They called out the names of deceased family members during the service. There was a special table for photographs of those people. It was all quite lovely.

We were sat near the band. And when the food was done the band played. And they played for about three hours. A lot of fun. Near the end of the night, the horn section got one last moment in the lime light.

Sunday, we got up, finished packing and headed to the airport. In, out and up very quickly. An easy flight back, a little turbulence just before we landed. Out of the airport and into the 19 degree weather. It felt like 0 degrees. It felt like nothing. It felt cold. And it got about negative six degrees colder over night.

Today was about working on work stuff. Wrote my online class. Built up notes from the halftime show for a conversation tomorrow in Rituals and Traditions. I wonder if the students enjoyed the show. We’ll talk about a few stories in Criticism, and so I re-read those. Then I started lining up all of the things that need to get done in the next few weeks. It’s a lot, and at least its cold outside, so I can stay inside, and get some of it done.

And now, I have to spend the rest of the night in Qualtrics, to finish building a survey.

adventures / Friday / friends / photo — No comments
06
Feb 26

We crammed in a full day in the whole day

Made it up to the 50s here today. It was glorious, even as I spent most of it indoors.

This morning we walked in the brisk morning air to one of those legendary neighborhood hipster brunch spots. Walked right in, sat right down. And despite the ” target=”_blank”>Flying Biscuit Cafe having 45 locations around the South, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of it, let alone been there. I ordered the chicken and waffles. It was filling, which was the point. Pretty decent, but nowhere near as good as the entertainment.

There was a man sitting across the store, a loud talker, telling his breakfast companion about alien conspiracy theories. I was intrigued, right up until we got to how they are now among us. Also, he couldn’t keep which set of his physics he wanted to use. I wanted to go over and ask him what the aliens were doing here. What’s the goal? Domination? They flew here, they’ve got us on tech. Just hanging out? We can be laughably entertaining. Political refugees? That’s just bad timing on their part. Then I started looking around, like I was in a scene from Men in Black.

I mean, you never know, you know? Especially once you know they’re here.

I saw no aliens. But I did see my first robot car. Or should I say my first full-sized remote control car.

Then we saw them all day. The novelty wore off incredibly quickly.

I enjoyed this crosswalk. All four sides of that block had rainbow crosswalks, which was colorful and joyous and wonderful and, honestly, we need more variety in public life, and if some of it makes a statement about people’s rights, that’s great too.

Another fun thing is art that makes shadows that spell things. Reverse shadow type, very clever, and all you need is the sun.

We had a department meeting via Zoom. Almost as fun as a meeting in person. Students were nominated for prestigious awards. We considered plans for how they should be honored. All of that is fun. I always like how passionate faculty are about honoring students. We discussed departmental application and enrollment and numbers, which are all impressive. Other items now have pins put in them. Still other things were teased. We tease information among colleagues.

I do not know why we do that, but we do.

Also, I remedied some technical problems with my online class. Thoroughly productive in every way.

And then my lovely bride did a radio hit, via Zoom. A producer wrote her to set up an interview with Times Radio’s Henry Bonshu.

The topic was politics in sport. It seems there is an Olympics going on. She is a globally renowned expert in the Olympics. And while this has never happened before, there seemed to be some sort of controversy surrounding one of the Olympians. A British skier left a message in the snow. And so that was the interview. Click Bonshu’s name and you can hear the interview, which was heard by all of Great Britain. Scroll about 90 minutes into the show.

We attended the welcome party for the wedding. Saw the groom, who is the Yankee’s former student. We reunited with another one of her former students and had a lovely catch-up chat. I lot can happen in a decade, it turns out. We also visited with the groom’s parents, who we are friends with. They had a successful barbecue concern, but retired two years ago. And now both of their kids are married off and they’re just the cutest, sweetest people.

The mother of the groom was given carte blanche on what she is wearing tomorrow. No one had seen it. Not her son, not her husband. But she showed us a photo. She’s going to be stunning. I looked up from the photo, made eye contact with her husband and said, “Prepare yourself, sir.”

It’s a black tie wedding, and she’s going to steal the show in a very elaborate ceremony.

That’s tomorrow. Tonight, here’s a little art I saw on our evening walk. What do you think is going on here? I’ve no idea, and could use the help.

Maybe we can figure that out by Monday.

adventures / friends / Rowan / Thursday / video — Comments Off
05
Feb 26

Left, on a jet plane

Want to guess where I am? You can guess where I am. Here’s your first hint, I am not at home. Here’s your second hint, it’s a quick trip. Here’s your third hint, here’s the mode of travel. Or, at least, part of it.

We are attending a wedding this weekend, meaning a few nights out in hotels and restaurants and with one or two people we know. We’ll be in and out in no time flat. Getting married is one of my lovely bride’s former students. (This is the third wedding we’ve been to out of that particular cohort.) It is a black tie affair. (No pressure, other former students.)

We are also chummy with the groom’s parents, who are delightful people and I am looking forward to seeing them all tomorrow.

From the airport, and after an easy direct flight, we took an Uber to the hotel. The woman that drove was was just adorable and hilarious. She told some stories about some of her clients. And she let me lean into a few jokes about them. A little small talk with a southern woman is a thing to behold. She dodged traffic and avoided idiots and got us to our hotel.

We checked in with no problem, and then had dinner at a newly opened hipster tavern a few blocks away. I had one of those burgers that was overstuffed with condiments. You had to be careful to lean all the way over your plate to avoid dripping anything on you. Also, they had spicy ketchup which was, authentically, spicy. I don’t know what inauthentically spicy ketchup tastes like, but this wasn’t that. It had a flavor profile that haunted the taste buds, lingering there like a hint, and a memory, a smoke that won’t leave the room, a spice that burned after its welcome was worn out. Fortunately, I could wash it down with a glass of sweet tea. Another thing to behold, and I held it, right there in my hand. And then I had a refill.

Maybe another. Who can count such a joyous thing?

Tomorrow, we have meetings, and then a welcome party for the wedding. And some virtual work on this tiny little desk in our little room. It’ll all be charming, and about 25 degrees warmer than home.

We started working on a survey instrument today in Rituals and Traditions. I’m going to have the class survey members of the campus community. The survey data will, hopefully, help them in their group projects. So there I sat, keyboard in hand, typing up the suggested questions that the class came up.

We started as a brainstorming session. No question too silly. Well, may not that question, that question is silly. We wound up with about 40 questions. And then we took a pass through the whole lot of them and struck a few that probably wouldn’t help too much. We re-framed some of the questions to shape them up a bit better. And now I have to cull the 30 or so that remain. Thirty is probably too many for the type of survey we’re going to conduct, so I have to get this list down to 15 or so. And then build the survey.

Great fun!

In Criticism we watched the HBO documentary Fists of Freedom, which covers the lead up, and protests in the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City.

I like Lee Evans’ part of the story, because he seems like a fun guy. The best segment here is Bob Beamon’s record-breaking long jump. It’s a beautiful moment of filmmaking. Scrub ahead to 36:08 for that.

They called it the leap of the century, and it took something like 15 minutes to resolve the distance. In the end, he’d jumped 21 inches farther than the previous world record. (And the world record holder was in the field at those Games.) Beamon’s mark would stand for decades.

The whole documentary is well done. (Though there are some weird edits in the embedded video for some reason.) Released in 1999, almost all of the primary participants are included here. Bronze medal winner John Carlos, notably, is absent. And we’ll talk about that in class next week. This documentary, and next week’s will hopefully set the stage for how we think about documentaries over the rest of the term.

But I’m not going to think about that until Monday. For now, I’m going to relish these 35-degree lows and contemplate the sheer novelty of a 50+ degree day tomorrow. It is not that at home. Spring is about to hit, here, right on time. I know that because things will be budding by February 14th, when a normal spring should arrive. I know that because I have the curse of experience, which becomes an embittered thing in the second week of February and I see a low temperature of … 15.

At least, when it gets even colder at home this weekend we won’t be there. Until Sunday, when it gets even colder. But not here, and not right now.

baseball / journalism / photo / Rowan / sports / Wednesday — Comments Off
04
Feb 26

I found Bigfoot, he’s looking for money, same as everyone

Below the little banner is the summary of Tuesday. Here, above it, is a brief recounting of Wednesday.

I woke up, did all of the morning’s readings, did the email work. I had lunch. I had a meeting with faculty. I did more email. I wrote a message for my online class. I will send it, some 600 words of insight and updates and cheerful wisdom, tomorrow. I also finished prep for both of tomorrow’s classes. In one, we will talk about a few more typologies, I will stretch two pages of notes into 25 minutes and then we will develop questions for a survey. (I have seven of them already written down, but I’m only showing them three. Don’t tell.) In the other class we will watch a documentary. I also graded some stuff that needed grading. (Everyone did well, as expected; hopefully they’ll keep it up.)

I met with a student and solved several problems. The first problem was how to make Zoom work for both of us. The second problem was about how to do an assignment. Happy to help! The third problem: “How I am explaining something so poorly to this crop of students, when I have explained this same thing, with precisely this same language, to students in 2025 and 2024?” Parts of that problem may never be solved.

I also set up a meeting for Friday. Now I have two Friday meetings. One is at a very precise time, because faculty are keen on precision of schedules. The other is right now “friday works !” But, dear student, Friday does not work. A specific time would work. It is to be a Zoom meeting, sure, but I’ve done the sit in front of a Zoom window waiting for someone to show up all day thing a few times (ahhhh, 2020 …) and that’s too big an ask at this point. Open up your daily planner and figure out a good, specific time and we will have a grand and productive chat.

We’ll get there.

After all of this, it was time to catch up on the evening’s worth of reading.

I do a lot of reading. I think more of it is going to start coming from international media, and also books.

Do not get me started on the Washington Post, lest I bring out my press section banner and write a thousand brisk words about the obvious incompatibility between oligarchs and watchdog journalism, and the cute way little masthead slogans presage the ending of legacy media.

Instead, yesterday!

This was the view on the way to campus Tuesday. Everything looks exactly like this. This all fell from the sky Saturday night and Sunday a week ago. Monday, I helped a neighbor dig out their sidewalk, because this stuff is going nowhere. The longterm useless forecast says we might see 39 degrees Wednesday of next week. Maybe 40 on Friday!

That’d be a full three weeks under 40. That seems … excessive.

In Rituals and Traditions — Rits and Trads if you’re in a hurry — we discussed why we watch sports. I had a list of typologies to share. As we talked about the reasons why people watched sports they managed to list five of the six typologies I had listed before I put them on the screen. So now I’m a magician.

Then I broke them into their groups, because group work will be an important part of the class, and we’re heading that direction rapidly now.

In my Criticism class we talked about our first two stories of the semester. We discussed this story out of Texas.

The Liga Venezolana is a local example of how the millions of Venezeulans who have scattered across the Americas have brought with them an invigorating enthusiasm for the “American Pastime.” Leaving behind a country rife with political and economic turbulence and arriving in new landscapes where they are often scapegoated in political rhetoric, they have used the sport they know best to root themselves in a sense of home.

The league immigrants have created in Austin is far from the popularly imagined recreational softball scene of on-field beers and calm. The Liga Venezolana’s fans know how to intimidate. Its teams operate social media accounts. Many of its players, like Mao, have recorded strikeouts or stolen bases as pros on minor league teams. The league keeps stats and operates livestreams. Its intensity has made it a social focal point for the fast-growing Venezuelan immigrant community that has settled in North Austin, Pflugerville, Cedar Park and Leander in recent years. Since 2021, the league has ballooned from four to 22 teams and from about 70 to 600 players.

We also talked about this story.

Dr. Christopher Ahmad, Tommy John expert and head team physician for the New York Yankees, has performed the surgery on some of the biggest names in baseball. But he has also been privy to the other side of the story.

“The alarms are going off on how devastating this problem is to the youngest players,” he says in an interview with CNN Sports.

“When I first started doing Tommy John surgery about 25 years ago, the population who I was operating on who needed the surgery were essentially very high-level players – they were college prospects destined to be professional, or professional players.

“Now, the population who needs the surgery most are kids.”

Of the 10-15 Tommy John surgeries that he performs every week, Ahmad estimates that between eight and 10 are on high school children, with some even still in middle school.

For a first week of talking about stories, the interactions were pretty good. Started strong, and faded away a bit, perhaps. But we’ll get it there.

I tried, during that class, to play some audio, but the sound was tricky. Knowing I was going to show a documentary, I stuck around to tinker with it. Eventually my lovely bride came in to look for me. Then a woman who had a later class came in to get ready. I don’t know how many degrees we all have, but it took that many degrees to solve the problem, a problem I finally figured out by … adjusting the volume.

To be fair, there are a lot of options and buttons and switches.

Opposite from the elevators in our building are TV monitors and they’re programmed with the time and weather and promoting various events and services. Pretty standard stuff, usually. Sometimes something interesting is on the screen and I can see it for 2.7 seconds, just long enough to realize it is interesting, but not long to read it all. And there are a lot of things to promote. No one, not even me, is going to stand there and wait for the interesting thing to pop back up again.

But sometimes the elevator is slow, and sometimes you can catch a good one.

That’s the total promo. No contact info, no club or school or department affiliation, no deadlines listed. But it’s intriguing enough, I guess. Unless they, whoever they are, are trying to tell people that winning a scholarship is as likely as seeing Nelly, or Bigfoot, or aliens. Clearly it raises more questions than answers. More space was needed, I guess.

Older analog styles are the way to go with sophisticated messaging that has a lot of words, or dates, or URLs. Our building doesn’t have a lot of bulletin boards, which is a bit of a shame. I love taking a few moments to read the useful things, the random things, learn about new clubs and interest groups, and enjoy the truly wacky stuff people produce for public billboards. It’s cleaner and neater, sure, but we are just a tiny bit the lesser for it.

OK, now, on Wednesday, I’ve written about Tuesday and Wednesday. You know what that means for tomorrow, then, right? Back on schedule again. You’re relieved, I can tell from here.

memories / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
03
Feb 26

A well of a tale

Out and about yesterday. Errands had to be ran. I ran errands. Errands were run. Nothing to it, really. Out and about to do the things that need doing. Already I have overstated it. Oh, all right.

No. They’re errands and unremarkable in every way. No one cares.

Except to say this. I stopped at a gas station. As I was going inside, a man was coming out. He had a bag of ice under his arm. He seemed a man fixed on his business and going about his way. Passing one another in the doorway it wasn’t the time to strike up a conversation. But I wanted to have a quick chat. I wanted to ask about that ice. I bet he felt silly, since everything, everywhere, looks like this.

That’s our driveway, and this was eight days after the snow and the sleet turned into ice. It isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. And today I spent a bit of time widening it out a bit more. Just a car could narrowly pass, but you shouldn’t need to demonstrate your best driving skills leaving or returning home.

Plus we had a great big truck come by yesterday. We had a great big truck visit because of the joys of home ownership.

Let me back up. In November of 2023 I called the well company to do a regular tank maintenance. That was a first for me. I’ve never lived on a well before. The appointment was made. During the time between scheduling that visit and the guy showing up, the well start failing. Imagine a pipe spewing water like a low-stakes submarine movie scene. The guy came with his two workers and squatted down and looked at it and started moaning and sighing and muttering and I honestly thought he was having a medical episode in our basement.

Turns out he was fine, but the tank was at death’s door. We could leave it as is — and I’m still not sure why that was even presented as an option — or we could replace it that day. We chose the later, because I like things to work, and not sopping up my floors.

The new tank, he said, was a fiberglass tank. And it’ll never rust out, which was a big sales point at the time. Perhaps you can see why.

(What is that green stuff underneath the well tank?)

They put in that fiberglass tank and everything was just peachy keen. About three weeks ago, though, I started hearing a surging sound in the walls. Taking a shower, flushing the toilet, running the washer, you’d hear this sound. It was soothing, or it would have been in any context that didn’t suggest your house was about to implode.

So I called the well company again and explained all this. Talked to the owner, an older fellow who could do 10 or 12 minutes of comedy on most anything, I decided. He said he’d come on out, but could we wait until after the storm because he was backed up. He assured me that I wasn’t hurting anything by waiting, because the things that were bad weren’t getting worse.

The fiberglass tank. He had me tap on it and that’s how he knew.

His son came by yesterday, same guy that put this thing in just 27 months ago. Sure enough, the tank was done. Just as his father told me on the phone, these tanks were terrible and they were never buying and selling those again. His dad said they’d bought six, had to send four of them back. We had one of the other two. The owner said he’d been taken it in the teeth on these things. And ours was under warranty. I apologized that he was going to eat another bite of lemon, but I was glad that we weren’t buying a new one. We’d be in for labor, and that seemed fair.

So the son was here with an assistant. They took the old tank out, and put in this new one. We’ll see how susceptible it is to rusting.

Also, the new tank has a five-year warranty. And we did not pay for it, because it was a replacement for the fiberglass failure. Initially he tried to charge me for that, but we worked it out, saving about a grand in a quick and easy conversation.

I hope they don’t have to replace tanks often, because I don’t want to watch that guy lug the thing up and out of the basement, but they seem like fine fellows. Which is good, I suppose, now that we will have them back for yearly inspections.

This, just writing about yesterday, is already threatening to get long, so let’s have a few days of writing in arrears. Today is Tuesday, but I’ve written about Monday; tomorrow is Wednesday, I can write about Tuesday. Tuesday, if you can believe it, was almost as riveting as this tale. Come back and see.