8.8.2023 – sunrise appointment

sunrise appointment
all morning commuting not
created equal

Been driving to work for over 40 years.

Never got to like it.

Still don’t.

But …

Back in 2009, we got relocated to Atlanta, Georgia and I drove from the upper north side of Gwinnett to midtown ATL 5 days a week for 12 years.

Was it bad?

I will tell you that one Sunday the Pastor started his sermon with “… Maybe you have an awful job. Maybe you are dealing with a bad financial situation. Maybe you have health issues … Maybe you start your day driving on I85.“

45 minutes to 1 and half hours EACH way on average until I started to leave for work at 6AM, then the trip in took 34 minutes but the return trip started at 5pm with all the folks who just wanted to get home.

It was long.

It was scary.

Each day had the chance to end up in a chaos or death.

But I lived near the freeway and I worked near the freeway.

It was a left turn onto the free way out in Gwinnett and a left off the freeway in midtown so overall it was not TOO demanding.

There was really just one way to go and for good or bad, you got on the road and made due.

Not like when I lived on the north end of Grand Rapids, Michigan and worked on the south end out near the airport.

With that commute I had lots of ways to get there and back.

Lots of ways and all of them bad.

Some with freeways, some with back alleys.

Take I96 to Patterson.

Take Fuller to Michigan to East Paris.

Take Fuller to Lake Drive and the Beltline.

I can remember them all.

All of them with left turns, right turns and intersections with stoplights and all of them leaving you wishing you had taken another route.

Exasperating to say the least and not much to say on the side of what might be any redeeming factor.

The winter weather that came with living in Michigan was the frosting on that commuting cake.

Today I live just miles from the Atlantic coast.

My office is within walking distant of the beach.

My home is about 10 miles away.

I leave early in the morning.

With the changes of seasons and the time change, 4 times a year I drive into the crack of dawn..

I like to think that I have an appointment with the sunrise.

I am still surrounded by some of the dumbest drivers on God’s green earth.

Add in the demands each driver faces when they are tasked with operating a moving piece of machinery while trying to manage their lives via call phone and there is a level of exasperation that isn’t going away.

Years ago I signed up from traffic alerts for my commute in ATL.

I still get them.

In the last 24 hours I have received alerts that:

Accident. Left shoulder blocked – I 85 South at GA-140/J Carter Blvd/Exit 99 …

8 mph on 85 South @ Jimmy Carter Blvd (just before) …

20 mph on 85 North @ Old Peachtree Rd NW …

Accident reported – I 85 North at GA-317/Exit 111 …

This morning, the sun was still dripping water after sliding up and out of the Atlantic Ocean.

Not all commutes are created equal.

8.7.2023 – leave me there before

leave me there before
latest realignment round
it’s just weird – greed wins

Drop me at the beginning of the College Football Playoff era and leave me there. In my mind, college football had reached the best version of itself. The conferences were aligned perfectly. Geography mattered, and regional pride was supreme. There was a functional way to create an intriguing postseason and properly crown a national champion without subjectivity. And upsets, the crown jewel of this sport, still mattered. It was college football nirvana.

We get that for one more glorious year before greed wins.

That’s the hardest part about this latest and irreversible round of realignment. It wasn’t done to improve the product or serve the consumer. It’s just weird. It removes the essence of regionality, and nobody likes it. Really, this whole thing just stinks — even if we can admit that we will see some new and exciting matchups in the near future.

From Savor the 2023 college football season — it’s the last one like it we’ll ever get by By Ari Wasserman in the Athletic.

I am reminded of the movie ‘The Wind and the Lion’ with Brian Keith having a wonderful time as President Theodore Roosevelt and Sean Connery as Desert Sheik with a scots accent.

At one point, the Connery character talks to one of his lieutenants and says:

What has become of honor, respect?
Everything is changing, drifting away on the wind.
It’s been a bad year.
The next one will probably be worse.

8.6.2023 – it is not funny

it is not funny
but it’s hard not to chuckle
fortnight for fight night

As Guardians broadcaster Tom Hamilton intoned, “Down goes Anderson!”

Tom Hamilton’s call of the Jose Ramirez-Tim Anderson fight on Cleveland radio is the stuff of legend.

“DOWN GOES ANDERSON! DOWN GOES ANDERSON!”

“It’s not funny,” Guardians manager Terry Francona said after the game, “but coming in (to the clubhouse) and listening to Hammy, it’s hard not to chuckle.”

Call me soft but I think Anderson should be benched by the league for two weeks. A fortnight for a fight night. He should get seven games for starting it and another seven for losing. That’ll teach him to square up like he’s Sonny Liston.

So reads the article Tim Anderson’s nightmare season takes a KO in Cleveland By Jon Greenberg in the Athletic, Aug. 6, 2023.

I don’t follow baseball like I used to but I do follow baseball writing.

Anyone who can get the word fortnight into a story about baseball deserves recognition.

I found it fascinating that shoving fortnight into the google, I found myself on webpages where the discussion about that the word FORTNITE, which was the name of a game that took over the world wide web for its 15 minutes of fame a bit ago, was based on a centuries old REAL WORLD, fortnight.

This discussion pointed out that it meant 2 weeks or 14 days and writers like Shakespeare, Dickens and Twain all used the word FORTNIGHT in their writing and it HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH the game!

How ’bout that!

But I digress.

Aside from that, Mr. Greenberg’s chronicling of the downs and downs of this season by Chicago White Sox infielder Tim Anderson is, well, funny.

Fighting in any sport is not to be condoned.

But …

But sometimes you get to look past the fight to what was going on before the fight and, well, it’s that quote from Guardians manager Terry Francona said after the game, “it’s not funny, … [but] it’s hard not to chuckle.”

8.5.2023 – strikingly glowing

strikingly glowing
marked brilliance of expression
oh incandescence

Rereading Edmund Morris’s book on Thomas Edison at the same time the end of the incandescent lightbulb put in mind to write about two things.

One is the incandescent lightbulb itself.

I am fascinated in this age when old invention exist.

I think of the qwerty keyboard.

Who could guess that such and invention would be driving computers worldwide to this day.

The feller who invented it may not recognize the computer but he would be able to type on the keyboard.

And the electric lightbuld.

The glass bulb and the filament.

The only visual change from that bulb and the one Thomas Edison first showed off in 1879 except that soon after being introduced one of Edison’s engineer came up with the threaded base so it could be screwed into a socket and if held upside down, would not slide out of the socket.

I will miss these light bulbs

Even if I don’t notice when they are being replaced.

The other thing I want to comment on is that most marvelous of words, incandescence.

The word is not onomatopoeic but is it autological or a word that describes itself?

Can it be autological when it has so many meanings?

Incandescence.

Look at the online Merriam-Webster.

incandescent
adjective
in·​can·​des·​cent ˌin-kən-ˈde-sᵊnt
1
a : white, glowing, or luminous with intense heat
b : strikingly bright, radiant, or clear
c: marked by brilliance especially of expression incandescent wit
d: characterized by glowing zeal : ARDENT incandescent affection
2
a: of, relating to, or being light produced by incandescence
b: producing light by incandescence

Then, wikipedia explains Incandescence as the emission of electromagnetic radiation (including visible light) from a hot body as a result of its high temperature. The term derives from the Latin verb incandescere, to glow white.

If you needed a word that described glowing, or luminous with intense heat, strikingly bright, radiant, or clear – marked by brilliance especially of expression – characterized by glowing zeal as well as emission of electromagnetic radiation (including visible light) from a hot body as a result of its high temperature, what word could you come up with other than incandescent.

I am also reminded of a dress was made for Alice Claypoole Vanderbilt. of yellow satin, decorated with glass pearls and beads in a lightning-bolt pattern. A built-in battery lit a light bulb she carried, which she could raise over her head like the Statue of Liberty, made for a masquerade ball that was held in New York City on March 26, 1883. The ball was hosted by Alice Vanderbilt’s sister-in-law, Alva Vanderbilt, as a housewarming party for Alva and William K. Vanderbilt’s new mansion at 660 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.

The house was one of the first with Mr. Edison’s electric lights.

As Bill Bryson writes in his book, The Home, this was possibly the only occasion in her life in which she could be described as radiant.

8.4.2023 – impossible to

impossible to
listen without idea that
senses are deceived

No matter how familiar a person may be with modern machinery and its wonderful performances, or how clear in his mind the principle underlying this strange device may be, it is impossible to listen to the mechanical speech without his experiencing the idea that his senses are deceiving him.

So reads an article in in the journal, Scientific American.

The date of the article is December 22, 1877.

The subject of the article?

The article was written after an in office demonstration of Thomas A. Edison’s first phonograph.

As the Scientific American, it was a ” …simple little contrivance” as the machine itself is still working, or at least it was when Alistair Cooke demonstrated it in his America: A Personal History of the United States (which was produced in 1976 … this video itself is 50 years … how did that happen??)

The AI of its day and the phonograph inspired some of the same fears.

It is already possible by ingenious optical contrivances to throw stereoscopic photographs of people on screens in full view of an audience. Add the talking phonograph to counterfeit their voices, and it would be difficult to carry the Illusion of real presence much further.

The sky is falling … again.

Lets run and tell the King.

PS: Thinking of Kings and those who want to be, this article also had a warning for its day and today.

“The witness“, states the article, “in court will find his own testimony repeated by machine confronting him on cross examination.”