😥 📺 Really going to miss the show Evil.
Notes, 2024-08-19
It’s been quite some time since I’ve done anything with any of my various blogs. I got super busy with work and, since a lot of that busy-ness deals with writing words and thinking about topics, the blogs tend to suffer when it picks up like that. But since things have slowed back down a bit, I’ve still had a hard time getting back into the habit (not that it was every anything approaching _regular_). Part of that, I think, is the initial hurdle of thinking of something worth writing about. Then I read this post from Thomas Rigby today and figured it was as good a time as any to take a shot at a public day note. I’ve kept day notes in Obisidian (or before that, Notion/Roam/BuJo, etc.) for things I’m working on but haven’t ever tired combining them with the more personal “whats-going-on-in-your-life” kinds of notes. I don’t know why. So, with that preamble, here are some notes from today.
👌 3 Good Things
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On the way home from school pickup, my daughter was asking for a song but didn’t really know any of the words or the melody or really anything about it other than the singer’s voice being “so smoothing”1. We tried the whole way home but didn’t get anywhere. I love this game and get a little obsessed with trying to figure it out, so I kept thinking about it while we prepared dinner. I eventually got it. Mel McDaniel’s “Louisiana Saturday Night.” What a trip.
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When I arrived to pick up my son from his after school program at the community center, he was in the middle of coloring an Adventure Time coloring page and he was so excited about it that he talked about all of the characters the whole way home (sometimes over his sister’s descriptions of the song with the smoothing vocie). He has this way of getting so excited about something–could be a picture he’s drawing or coloring, or a Lego set he’s working on, or an obstacle course he’s built, or whatever–that he strings words together like he’s sprinting downhill… It’s pretty great.
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Yesterday, I bought a set of hair clippers for about $30 and decided to start cutting my own hair again. As a kid I almost always just let mom or dad or a friend’s dad cut it with clippers, then I started doing it myself as a young adult while in college, and had gotten away from it for the most part (with a short pandemic-related exception), but I’ve always liked the look of it and hated going to the barber even more. So, I’ve embraced it again. I cut it yesterday and did a pretty nice job. If I stick with it, the one-time cost of that pair of clippers is about the same as one haircut but I can use them again and again for years.
⭐️ Bonus Good Thing
- There’s been a coolness to the air throughout the day that feels amazing. Now that the sun’s down it feels almost like fall is rolling in. I’m sure it’s short-lived, but I’m enjoying it while it lasts.
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She always says this. It’s the best. ↩︎
It’s amazing what a few hours off on a Friday afternoon can do for one’s spirits.
Finished reading: Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright 📚
Finished reading: Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport 📚
That feeling when the deadlines were off in the distance but now they’re right here. And they’ve multiplied!
Amazing clip from yesterday’s Fox MLB broadcast at Rickwood Field in Birmingham. Reggie Jackson given an uninterrupted chance to describe his experience playing there. It’s so rare to see this kind of truth in modern sports broadcasts, but Mr. October has always been able to seize a moment. ⚾️
RIP Willie Mays, who "was baseball" ⚾️
Of the many Willie Mays tributes I read through today I, unsurprisingly, thought Ray Ratto’s at Defector was the best.
Willie Mays, who died Tuesday at the richly merited old age of 93, was baseball itself, more than anyone else ever connected with the game. Not just the best player, which he was. Not just the most joyful great player, which he also was. Not only the most extravagantly gifted of all the five-tool players that played during the richest era in the game’s history, although he absolutely was that as well. He was baseball, period, full stop.
Born in 1984, I never had the pleasure of watching Willie Mays play. As a lifelong, die-hard fan of the Pittsburgh Pirates, if given the opportunity to watch any player from the past I would choose Roberto Clemente. But there’s no doubt that Willie Mays would be the undisputed top choice among players who did not play for the Pirates.
Here’s Ratto again.
Mays was there at the moment when talent replaced race as the sport’s prime directive, when even the most recalcitrant segregationist owners finally found the time and financial inclination to teach their scouts color blindness; when the sport finally became what it could be, Willie Mays was something very like the living fulfillment of that promise.
Finished reading: A Psalm for the Wild-Built by Becky Chambers 📚
Johnson City's Blue Plum Festival
Had a great time celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Blue Plum festival last night. Great food and music, lots of fun stuff for the kids, cool stuff from local artisans, and friendly people.
The festival has changed quite a bit over the years since I first moved here more than 20 years ago, but it seems to have regained a lot of its old momentum since Covid.
I’m consistently reminded of how grateful I am to love the place we live.
China Miéville wrote a book with Keanu Reeves
Excited about this collaboration between Keanu Reeves and–of all people–China Miéville as covered in Wired. The books sounds great (though I refrained from reading anything past the spoiler warning), but I was most interested in the little glimpses into Miéville’s life and process.
Some highlights include this startlingly insightful theory about what defines “nerd culture.”
And, though 51, he still plays with toys. At one point I awkwardly gestured at this, and he told me, “I have a theory. One of the things that tends to distinguish nerds and their interests is, broadly speaking, that they have fidelity to their loves in a way that other people don’t. I don’t mean other people are unfaithful in a flibbertigibbety way, but! The stuff I was into when I was 4 is still the stuff I’m into. From as early as I can remember, it was sea monsters. Aliens …”
Further, I think Miéville perfectly summed up my own personal tastes in fiction over the last few years. What he’s interested in writing about is a direct analog to what I’ve found myself interested in reading (which includes Miéville1 but also, in my opinion, other contemporary authors like Jeff VanderMeer and Ray Nayler).
He doesn’t write science fiction because he’s a communist or because he wants to bring about the revolution. Instead, he thinks of himself as pursuing “difference” within and across his books: “Alterity. That’s where my heart beats.”
This “alterity” is something that, since reading this article, I realized I’ve been seeking and finding in my favorite literature going back years. When I think of my favorite novels from McCarthy, DeLillo, and Faulkner, this “alterity” and the ways that affects the characters and plot is at the forefront of what I most enjoyed.
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While I’ve read only This Census Taker, I loved it so much that I feel no hesitation about placing Miéville among my favorite living authors. Perdido Street Station arrived today and I am excited to start it soon. ↩︎
Finished reading: This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar 📚
Finished reading: Bunny by Mona Awad 📚
Loved this book. Not at all surprised to learn that it’s been optioned for a film by Bad Robot. Super dark and creative and fun with a voice that really leapt out as being ready-made for film or TV. Lots of interesting things to say about friendship and loneliness and college towns and desire and creativity and jealousy and on and on.
📺 Finished the second season of From on MGM+ yesterday (until a couple weeks ago, when we signed up for a free trial to specifically watch this show, I had never heard of this service) and found it really interesting. Like Lost, but horror (Harold Perrineau, even!)
# 🎵 An hour-long Oasis playlist
After getting hooked on @adam ’s St. Vincent playlist and the rest of their “Finest Hour” series in which they “compile [their] favorite of an artist’s songs into a playlist not a minute longer than 1 hour in duration1,” I decided to take the format for a spin myself, starting with Oasis.
Gtting this playlist under an hour was an excruciating task. I had to cut a dozen or more songs that I consider among my favorite by any artist. Initially, I had almost four hours. But I’m proud of what I ended up with. I love having the constraint of an hour… takes me back to the days of recording cassettes or burning CDs and being by their capacity.
The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the chains that shackle the spirit.
–Igor Stravinsky
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And what a great name for that concept. ↩︎
Winging it
This is now my fifth post of WeblogPoMo across three different sites. Maybe I’ll try for four by the end–I’ve heard great things about Pika. There are things I like about each of the trio of micro.blog, weblog.lol, and scribbles.page. I guess it’s nice to have options. Maybe through sheer volume I’ll have some semblance of a plan or path by the end of the month.
Star Wars Day Top 10 #WeblogPoMo2024
As a kid whose most formative years fell in the early 90s, I missed some of the Star Wars craze, and might have missed it altogether if not for my friend Geoff. He had a couple older brothers who I think had introduced him pretty early on and he was obsessed. I remember watching the original trilogy on VHS at Geoff’s house many times (Star Wars and Sega and Space Hog), and I know for sure that was my initial introduction. At the time–I think I was maybe 8?– Return of the Jedi was my favorite.
The “Special Edition” theatrical releases came out while I was in junior high and by then Empire was my favorite (of course). I remember going to the theater with Geoff and several other friends to catch these and it really took the experience to another level to be able to watch on the big screen. I wasn’t attached enough to the originals to take offense to any of the changes, but I empathized anyway.
The prequel trilogy debuted around the time I started high school and I also remember going to see all of them in the theater with groups of friends. I did not care for them, but I had one friend who really loved them.
We had this super cool theater in the town where I grew up that was kind of a dump–a relic of another time. One screen. Old, saggy seats. Bad concessions. But it was in our town. And it got new movies. And a bunch of us could meet up there and watch something and then use the pay phone on the corner to call for a ride. It was amazing.
I never got into any of the animated series, and kind of let Star Wars as an entity fade from my mind in the years after the prequels, but I was, somewhat surprisingly, super excited about the announcement of the new sequel trilogy and have really liked several of the films and tv series. Anyway, all of this is intended to lead in to my (a relatively casual fan who needs to do a lot of catching up on stuff) completely non-definitive ranking of my top ten favorite Star Wars properties, in terms of how much I like them on this May the Fourth of 2024.
- Andor, s1
- Empire
- Rogue One
- TLJ
- A New Hope
- The Force Awakens
- RotJ
- Mandalorian, s1
- Mandalorian, s2
- Solo
Lifelong Learning
I realized recently (or, maybe just remembered) that learning is one of my favorite things in the world. This week, it came up in a work context wherein I volunteered to cross train with another department despite being completely buried with my own work at the moment and having already committed to other similar opportunities that haven’t even begun. I’m fortunate enough to work in a role and for a company that values learning and puts enough priority behind it that we can actually take advantage and build some new knowledge within our company and field. It’s the most excited I’ve been for a new project in quite a while.
Reminiscence Therapy and 'Remembering Some Guys'
Read this article at Defector the other day and came away completely blown away by the whole idea of “reminiscence therapy.”
There’s light-centered therapy or music therapy [. . .] art therapy, which becomes ideal for some patients who might become more reluctant to talk as the disease progresses [. . .] But there’s also something called reminiscence therapy. The idea is that by recalling past events, usually those associated with happy times, dementia patients can be more cheerful and sociable. The phrase used a lot is “come out of their shells.”
Turns out, some enterprising folks associated with the Society for a American Baseball Research (SABR) are leveraging this tool to help dementia patients through the kinds of conversations that pretty much any baseball fan enjoys: ‘remembering some guys’1.
The idea and the events have become so popular that they’ve now got a formal partnership with the Alzheimer’s Association. There’s even a site set up with resources to help start chapters in your area (https://sabrbaseballmemories.org/). Pretty cool stuff.
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Which is what about 95% of my contemporary conversations with my old high school friends consist of these days. ↩︎
An ode to a picnic table
One of the best purchases we’ve made since purchasing our house a few years ago is a cheap build-it-yourself picnic table kit from one of the big box hardware stores. We brought it home, put it together, and eventually painted it a really cool ocean blue color that we thought looked nice on our deck. It was part of a larger ‘beautification’ plan, which also included a few bird feeders and pollinator-friendly plants and flowers for a little mulch bed, for the driveway-adjacent area where we spent a lot of our time.
It’s not the best or most pristine picnic table—it’s often covered in stuff, the paint has started to chip and flake away, and there’s even some interesting fungus growing out of one of the ends, but since getting this picnic table set up, we’ve eaten outside nearly every day when the weather’s been pleasant (which is a pretty significant percentage of the days for a good chunk of the year here in northeast Tennessee) and I am continuously surprised at how much the practice of eating, together, outside changes our collective moods for the better.
I’ve not given much thought to the reasons for this effect (and really just noticed the correlation relatively recently), but I suspect it has something to do with the change in scenery creating a more ‘mindful’ approach to our meals. Inside, we tend to be distracted by whatever toy or trinket we happen to have nearby[^1]. Outside, we’re similarly distracted by all the goings on of our space, but they’re all shared distractions—when one of the kids points out a nearby butterfly or bug or that the dog has just snatched up a little fallen scrap, we’re all brought into that moment rather than staying in our own separate little worlds.
But the picnic table has created joy even when we’re not using it to eat. We carve our pumpkins each fall on the picnic table. The kids frequently paint or blow bubbles there. It’s a great spot to just sit in the spring when all you want to do is feel the warmth of the sun. So, all that is to say, here’s to you, picnic table. May you continue to bring our family joy for years to come.
