Every once in a while something crosses your social media feed that makes you stop and think a bit.
Like most quiet kids, I had my share of bullies in school. They didn’t tend to stick around, though, since I wasn’t much of a target. I didn’t particularly care what they thought of me so they never really got the reaction they were looking for by telling me their opinions. I was big enough and athletic enough that they thought twice before trying anything physical. My general strategy for dealing with them was simply to ignore them until they got bored and moved on, which rarely took long.
There weren’t that many of them – I had my friends, and most of the rest of the kids didn’t pay me much attention one way or another – and I quickly forgot their names. I can still remember the name of every girl I ever had a crush on in school – which is almost certainly more than they can say about me – but the bullies didn’t seem worth the effort.
So when one of my friends on social media forwarded around an obituary the other day it took me a while to place why the name seemed familiar.
This guy was the persistent one, out of all of them. The only one who thought I was enough of a target to keep it up for more than a week or two. He was a genuine little shit of a kid, and I didn't miss him after he moved away to plague some other school.
He looked older in the obituary photo, as do we all these days. People said all the usual things in the comment section, and perhaps by this point in his life they were true. Maybe he stopped being such a shit somewhere along the way and grew up into a decent human being. I certainly hope so, though I wouldn’t know.
But to be honest I just couldn’t bring myself to care. He wasn’t even worth disliking back then, and I had no reason to think differently now. And that in itself has stuck with me these last few days.
There’s a lesson there, I suppose. If you treat people poorly, don’t be surprised if they write you off. Don’t be surprised if you don’t get a second chance, because you’re not owed one. Don’t be surprised if the only reaction they have to your death is the vague memory of how nice it felt when you disappeared the first time.
I try to treat people well, and for those who make that too difficult I just try not to deal with them at all. It makes life better for everyone that way. I hope that when it is my turn for my photo to get passed around social media nobody has the blank feeling about me that I did with this guy. Perhaps he contributed to this, as a negative example if nothing else, and I suppose I would owe him that much if so.
There are lessons to be learned in even the emptiest places, after all.
Sunday, April 21, 2024
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
Fly High
The Flyers were eliminated from the post-season today, on the last night of the regular season.
Like most of their games this year it was a hard-fought contest against a better opponent. The Flyers never quit, never stopped working, never gave an inch, and were in it right up to the end. It all became moot with about four minutes to go when another game that the Flyers needed to go their way didn’t, but that didn’t change anything in how they played.
They were a fun team to watch this season.
John Tortorella should get Coach of the Year. The fact that he had this undermanned, overmatched team two years into what everyone admits is a five-year rebuilding plan in a playoff position with six games left in the season and not eliminated until the last four minutes of the year is nothing short of miraculous. They were picked to finish in the bottom three of the league by every Sports Knob who paid attention to hockey last summer – right where they finished the previous season – but held onto a playoff position for most of the season anyway.
They also have the best mascot in professional sports.
I don’t expect victories. Not in sports, not in anything. I don’t expect championships. I’m from Philadelphia and pessimism is my birthright. Even if it happened before you were born – which, statistically, is now most people from Philadelphia these days – the epic collapse of the 1964 Phillies is engraved on the soul of everyone from that city. It defines our world view and gives us that sharp edge that so many outsiders find objectionable. So be it.
I want to be entertained when I watch sports. I want to see a team that goes down fighting, that concedes nothing, that opponents don’t want to play even if they’re pretty sure they’ll win.
That’s how you win fans in Philadelphia. That’s who we are.
The playoffs start next week, and the first round of the NHL playoffs is one of the most glorious times in all of American sports. I’ll probably watch, even if my team won’t be there. I’m used to that, and the game is fun no matter who’s playing.
And I’ll look forward to next season.
Like most of their games this year it was a hard-fought contest against a better opponent. The Flyers never quit, never stopped working, never gave an inch, and were in it right up to the end. It all became moot with about four minutes to go when another game that the Flyers needed to go their way didn’t, but that didn’t change anything in how they played.
They were a fun team to watch this season.
John Tortorella should get Coach of the Year. The fact that he had this undermanned, overmatched team two years into what everyone admits is a five-year rebuilding plan in a playoff position with six games left in the season and not eliminated until the last four minutes of the year is nothing short of miraculous. They were picked to finish in the bottom three of the league by every Sports Knob who paid attention to hockey last summer – right where they finished the previous season – but held onto a playoff position for most of the season anyway.
They also have the best mascot in professional sports.
I don’t expect victories. Not in sports, not in anything. I don’t expect championships. I’m from Philadelphia and pessimism is my birthright. Even if it happened before you were born – which, statistically, is now most people from Philadelphia these days – the epic collapse of the 1964 Phillies is engraved on the soul of everyone from that city. It defines our world view and gives us that sharp edge that so many outsiders find objectionable. So be it.
I want to be entertained when I watch sports. I want to see a team that goes down fighting, that concedes nothing, that opponents don’t want to play even if they’re pretty sure they’ll win.
That’s how you win fans in Philadelphia. That’s who we are.
The playoffs start next week, and the first round of the NHL playoffs is one of the most glorious times in all of American sports. I’ll probably watch, even if my team won’t be there. I’m used to that, and the game is fun no matter who’s playing.
And I’ll look forward to next season.
Thursday, April 11, 2024
Flying the Colors
I don’t spend a lot of time watching American football these days, though I do keep an eye out for my hometown Philadelphia Eagles. At this point it’s more of a geographic loyalty than an athletic loyalty, but the Birds have actually been pretty good the last few years and even when they weren’t good they were at least entertaining and I’ll take that.
Plus I live in the land of the Packers and you have to keep up with their fortunes if you plan to live in Wisconsin because otherwise nobody knows what to do with you.
Left to my own devices I’ll watch hockey or soccer, or even curling. But now and then football makes itself known to me and I’ll enjoy it on those occasions.
So it was with some interest that I noted an article yesterday describing how the Packers and the Eagles were going to play their first game this upcoming season in Brazil, of all places.
Now, I understand this. The NFL is trying to grow the game outside of the US, because a) the American market is pretty much saturated and all of the people who are going to become interested in football already are, and b) the sheer brutality of the sport is in the process of drying it up from the bottom, as more and more parents decide that they’d like their kids to reach middle age and still be able to put sentences together and so gently steer their offspring into less damaging activities such as sword swallowing or skydiving. The NFL needs to find new fans outside of the country, and they’ve been working on this for a while. They’ve played games in Europe for years now. They’re set to play in Mexico if they can ever get the stadium they picked to the point where it might actually be safe to play there. And now Brazil. Why not?
Except there’s a small problem.
The game will be played in Corinthians Arena, which is the home stadium of the appropriately named Corinthians, a Brazilian soccer team. Corinthians, it seems, are the bitter rivals of another Brazilian soccer team called Palmeiras, and as a result there is a fairly severe if still technically informal ban on the Palmeiras color in the stadium, to the point where Corinthians actually fined one of their players for wearing shoes of that color.
Palmeiras wears green.
I know.
I really, really wish I had been a fly on the wall during the meeting where the NFL bigwigs made this decision.
--
“Hey folks, we’d like to expand our market into Brazil. Any ideas for where we can put a game next season?
“Well, there’s this one stadium where they refuse to let anyone wear the color green because that’s their archrival’s color."
“Sounds ideal! What teams do you think we could get to play there?”
“How about the only two teams in the entire NFL whose uniforms are predominantly green?” *
“First of all, promoted. Second – get on that and make it happen right away.”
“You think we should have the teams wear their throwback uniforms instead?”
“Those ugly things? I suppose we could if we absolutely had to, though I don’t like it. What colors are they anyway?”
“Blue and yellow.”
“Don’t those make green?”
“Yeah, technically, but who’s gonna tell?”
“We can work with that. Which team has blue and which team has yellow?”
“Uh, they both have blue and yellow.”
“How will they tell each other apart?”
“Not our problem, is it?”
“Point taken. But what about the fans?”
“What about them?”
“Won’t they wear all of their Fan Gear?”
“Of course! We’ll even sell them more of it!”
"To whom? The Corinthians fans won't buy it and anyone who does will become a target."
"Why?"
“BECAUSE IT'S GREEN, YOU SEMI-LITERATE DOORKNOB. For BOTH teams."
"But the American fans will still wear the gear."
"Yes, they will. Again, for both teams. The whole stadium will be filled with people wearing green. They’ll be walking to the stadium wearing green. They’ll be tailgating wearing green. They’ll go barhopping or whatever it is one does in Brazil wearing green. They’ll be walking through the streets doing that loud obnoxious American thing wearing green.”
“And?”
“You don’t think that’s a problem?”
“Why, are Latin American soccer fans known for being passionate about their teams and everything connected to them or something?”
“…”
“…”
“No, no, of course not. I’m sure it will all go smoothly and without causing any international incidents or military counterstrikes.”
“THAT’S the spirit!”
--
Not enough popcorn in the world.
------
* Apparently I forgot about the NY Jets. Most people do.
Plus I live in the land of the Packers and you have to keep up with their fortunes if you plan to live in Wisconsin because otherwise nobody knows what to do with you.
Left to my own devices I’ll watch hockey or soccer, or even curling. But now and then football makes itself known to me and I’ll enjoy it on those occasions.
So it was with some interest that I noted an article yesterday describing how the Packers and the Eagles were going to play their first game this upcoming season in Brazil, of all places.
Now, I understand this. The NFL is trying to grow the game outside of the US, because a) the American market is pretty much saturated and all of the people who are going to become interested in football already are, and b) the sheer brutality of the sport is in the process of drying it up from the bottom, as more and more parents decide that they’d like their kids to reach middle age and still be able to put sentences together and so gently steer their offspring into less damaging activities such as sword swallowing or skydiving. The NFL needs to find new fans outside of the country, and they’ve been working on this for a while. They’ve played games in Europe for years now. They’re set to play in Mexico if they can ever get the stadium they picked to the point where it might actually be safe to play there. And now Brazil. Why not?
Except there’s a small problem.
The game will be played in Corinthians Arena, which is the home stadium of the appropriately named Corinthians, a Brazilian soccer team. Corinthians, it seems, are the bitter rivals of another Brazilian soccer team called Palmeiras, and as a result there is a fairly severe if still technically informal ban on the Palmeiras color in the stadium, to the point where Corinthians actually fined one of their players for wearing shoes of that color.
Palmeiras wears green.
I know.
I really, really wish I had been a fly on the wall during the meeting where the NFL bigwigs made this decision.
--
“Hey folks, we’d like to expand our market into Brazil. Any ideas for where we can put a game next season?
“Well, there’s this one stadium where they refuse to let anyone wear the color green because that’s their archrival’s color."
“Sounds ideal! What teams do you think we could get to play there?”
“How about the only two teams in the entire NFL whose uniforms are predominantly green?” *
“First of all, promoted. Second – get on that and make it happen right away.”
“You think we should have the teams wear their throwback uniforms instead?”
“Those ugly things? I suppose we could if we absolutely had to, though I don’t like it. What colors are they anyway?”
“Blue and yellow.”
“Don’t those make green?”
“Yeah, technically, but who’s gonna tell?”
“We can work with that. Which team has blue and which team has yellow?”
“Uh, they both have blue and yellow.”
“How will they tell each other apart?”
“Not our problem, is it?”
“Point taken. But what about the fans?”
“What about them?”
“Won’t they wear all of their Fan Gear?”
“Of course! We’ll even sell them more of it!”
"To whom? The Corinthians fans won't buy it and anyone who does will become a target."
"Why?"
“BECAUSE IT'S GREEN, YOU SEMI-LITERATE DOORKNOB. For BOTH teams."
"But the American fans will still wear the gear."
"Yes, they will. Again, for both teams. The whole stadium will be filled with people wearing green. They’ll be walking to the stadium wearing green. They’ll be tailgating wearing green. They’ll go barhopping or whatever it is one does in Brazil wearing green. They’ll be walking through the streets doing that loud obnoxious American thing wearing green.”
“And?”
“You don’t think that’s a problem?”
“Why, are Latin American soccer fans known for being passionate about their teams and everything connected to them or something?”
“…”
“…”
“No, no, of course not. I’m sure it will all go smoothly and without causing any international incidents or military counterstrikes.”
“THAT’S the spirit!”
--
Not enough popcorn in the world.
------
* Apparently I forgot about the NY Jets. Most people do.
Monday, April 8, 2024
Watching the Sun Fade Away
So the world didn’t end, the dragons remained quiescent, and the eclipse just sort of did its thing, and you know? It was still pretty cool.
This is the second solar eclipse that we’ve had here in Wisconsin in the last decade – rather a prodigious clip, all things considered. It was supposed to be cloudy just like the last one, but at least here in the southern part of the state it turned out to be a clear spring day.
No, I was not about to go traveling to get to where the entire sun would be obscured. Between the time and the distance and the crowds that would greet me once I got there that struck me as a bit more work than I was willing to put into it, though three cheers to those who felt it was worth it to them, I say. Jeri and Kit, some of our UCF friends, stopped by on Sunday for a visit as they did so, and it was lovely to meet them in person after seeing them on Zoom calls and various online forums over the years. They continued on their journey toward totality after leaving us, and I hope they had a grand time of it.
Today was a workday, though I did block off my calendar for the half hour when we got closest to totality and my earlier appointment canceled so I had a good long time to see. Kim found some eclipse glasses and let me have one, and a good-sized group of people gathered in the main courtyard outside the Commons to watch it happen.
I put the lens of my phone camera up to the glasses to see if I could get a decent picture of things, and the answer was “No, not really,” but I did try.
We all stood out there for a bit, chatting with colleagues and students, and watching the moon’s disc slowly work its way into the sun until there was only a sliver showing and then work its way back out. The sliver tended to rotate clockwise during this process for some reason.
Also, a bald eagle flew by while we were out there. Read into that what you will.
Eventually you realize that as cool as an eclipse is that’s pretty much all it does and then you go back to the rest of your day.
The next one that will come by anywhere near here will be about a thousand years from now, or might as well be given the realities of the human lifespan, but it was fun to see this one.
This is the second solar eclipse that we’ve had here in Wisconsin in the last decade – rather a prodigious clip, all things considered. It was supposed to be cloudy just like the last one, but at least here in the southern part of the state it turned out to be a clear spring day.
No, I was not about to go traveling to get to where the entire sun would be obscured. Between the time and the distance and the crowds that would greet me once I got there that struck me as a bit more work than I was willing to put into it, though three cheers to those who felt it was worth it to them, I say. Jeri and Kit, some of our UCF friends, stopped by on Sunday for a visit as they did so, and it was lovely to meet them in person after seeing them on Zoom calls and various online forums over the years. They continued on their journey toward totality after leaving us, and I hope they had a grand time of it.
Today was a workday, though I did block off my calendar for the half hour when we got closest to totality and my earlier appointment canceled so I had a good long time to see. Kim found some eclipse glasses and let me have one, and a good-sized group of people gathered in the main courtyard outside the Commons to watch it happen.
I put the lens of my phone camera up to the glasses to see if I could get a decent picture of things, and the answer was “No, not really,” but I did try.
We all stood out there for a bit, chatting with colleagues and students, and watching the moon’s disc slowly work its way into the sun until there was only a sliver showing and then work its way back out. The sliver tended to rotate clockwise during this process for some reason.
Also, a bald eagle flew by while we were out there. Read into that what you will.
Eventually you realize that as cool as an eclipse is that’s pretty much all it does and then you go back to the rest of your day.
The next one that will come by anywhere near here will be about a thousand years from now, or might as well be given the realities of the human lifespan, but it was fun to see this one.
Friday, April 5, 2024
Tax Time
We went back to the Tax Person today.
I used to do my own taxes. For a long time I did them by hand, which gradually got more and more complicated, and then I used TurboTax for a while until that got to be too much of a nuisance. When my mom died and we had to figure out the estate my brother just flat out told me “get someone else to do this” so we did and it was just the most wonderful thing ever. We showed up with a mountain of paperwork, spent an hour answering questions, and then … walked away. And someone else – someone who does this sort of thing for a living – took care of it.
We even got a refund, for the first time in over a decade. It was enough to cover a good chunk of the BFT23, in fact.
So yes, we were absolutely going to do this again this year.
They sent us the preliminary paperwork a few weeks ago and I got all four of us to sign in all of the places where we each individually needed to sign. I collected all of the various bits of paper (covered in numbers and acronyms, generally vertigo-inducing if you’re more of a word person than a number person) into folders according to type of paper. I declined to cancel the appointment – the paperwork had an opt-out appointment already set up, and I was good with that.
Last week the Tax Person went home sick about an hour before our appointment, which I am pretty sure had nothing to do with us but which did mean we had to reschedule.
Today was the day. Kim and I both found time to go, and we brought a slightly larger mountain of paperwork with us (all of this year’s and some of last year’s in case the Tax Person needed it, which turned out not to be so). We answered a bunch of questions. The Tax Person complimented me on my folders.
There will be no refund this year, which is kind of what we were expecting. Last year’s was an artifact of having way too much withheld from some of the things I inherited from my mom plus having two kids in college versus only one this year so that credit got cut in half this time around. But the bill will be rather minimal, and that’s fine. The goal is always to come close to the target – not too big of a bill (which can be tricky to fund all at once) or too big of a refund (which means that someone other than us has been earning interest money on our money), and we hit that sweet spot.
There will be some number crunching for an exact amount and then I will have to go back to do some Settling of Accounts before it all gets sent off to wherever it needs to be sent off, but it is now out of my hands and for that I am grateful.
I don’t enjoy paying taxes. Nobody does. But I’m a rational and mature adult so I know that they’re necessary. They pay for the services and infrastructure that we need, and there is such a thing as “enlightened self-interest” which understands that sometimes you have to sacrifice a bit up front to get greater returns back later. In an age that celebrates pure undistilled toddler-level greed this counts as a revelation to many people but so it goes.
I celebrated by going back to work and figuring out which students I needed to send graduation reminders to, because that’s the kind of wild man I am.
But I’m glad to have handed this job over to someone else, I’m glad it’s mostly done, and I will be happy to meet with the Tax Person next year.
I used to do my own taxes. For a long time I did them by hand, which gradually got more and more complicated, and then I used TurboTax for a while until that got to be too much of a nuisance. When my mom died and we had to figure out the estate my brother just flat out told me “get someone else to do this” so we did and it was just the most wonderful thing ever. We showed up with a mountain of paperwork, spent an hour answering questions, and then … walked away. And someone else – someone who does this sort of thing for a living – took care of it.
We even got a refund, for the first time in over a decade. It was enough to cover a good chunk of the BFT23, in fact.
So yes, we were absolutely going to do this again this year.
They sent us the preliminary paperwork a few weeks ago and I got all four of us to sign in all of the places where we each individually needed to sign. I collected all of the various bits of paper (covered in numbers and acronyms, generally vertigo-inducing if you’re more of a word person than a number person) into folders according to type of paper. I declined to cancel the appointment – the paperwork had an opt-out appointment already set up, and I was good with that.
Last week the Tax Person went home sick about an hour before our appointment, which I am pretty sure had nothing to do with us but which did mean we had to reschedule.
Today was the day. Kim and I both found time to go, and we brought a slightly larger mountain of paperwork with us (all of this year’s and some of last year’s in case the Tax Person needed it, which turned out not to be so). We answered a bunch of questions. The Tax Person complimented me on my folders.
There will be no refund this year, which is kind of what we were expecting. Last year’s was an artifact of having way too much withheld from some of the things I inherited from my mom plus having two kids in college versus only one this year so that credit got cut in half this time around. But the bill will be rather minimal, and that’s fine. The goal is always to come close to the target – not too big of a bill (which can be tricky to fund all at once) or too big of a refund (which means that someone other than us has been earning interest money on our money), and we hit that sweet spot.
There will be some number crunching for an exact amount and then I will have to go back to do some Settling of Accounts before it all gets sent off to wherever it needs to be sent off, but it is now out of my hands and for that I am grateful.
I don’t enjoy paying taxes. Nobody does. But I’m a rational and mature adult so I know that they’re necessary. They pay for the services and infrastructure that we need, and there is such a thing as “enlightened self-interest” which understands that sometimes you have to sacrifice a bit up front to get greater returns back later. In an age that celebrates pure undistilled toddler-level greed this counts as a revelation to many people but so it goes.
I celebrated by going back to work and figuring out which students I needed to send graduation reminders to, because that’s the kind of wild man I am.
But I’m glad to have handed this job over to someone else, I’m glad it’s mostly done, and I will be happy to meet with the Tax Person next year.
Saturday, March 30, 2024
News and Updates
1. The Elite 8 haven’t even tipped off and already our brackets are done. Kim has been declared the winner and will be awarded the Fabulous Prizes whenever we determine what, if anything, they are. Thanks for playing! See you all next year.
2. Somewhere in Hong Kong is a person using Chrome on a Mac who has been pinging this blog over a thousand times a day for the last few weeks and I have no idea what they’re getting out of this exercise other than older. There can’t be any money in it. Whatever useful information I might have was probably already sold by the guy in Singapore who did this a few months earlier. Drop me a note and say hello, my guy.
3. It’s not even April and we’re already making travel plans for summer and in some cases it’s clear that we might have waited too long but in other cases we’re pretty much good to go. We’ll see. But we’re going to take advantage of the opportunities as best we can while we can, because at some point there will come a time when those windows close. I’m already in my Travel Anxiety stage of thinking we could just stay home and relax instead, but I know from experience that I will have a very good time once the process is underway so I just ignore it. I have no baseline expectation of comfort and I do like being other places even if the set-up for it drives me mad. So on we go.
4. I went back to FamilySearch to see what new stuff was there, after a long hiatus where I have been mostly plinking around on Ancestry when I manage to find time to do this at all. FamilySearch organizes their search results quite differently, but once you get the hang of it you can find some interesting things. I looked up my grandmother and found a family tree she’s in, and if the guy who put it together is correct I may be somewhere in line for the English throne, as my grandfather – the one who flaked off in 1940 – can claim descent from Edward I. I find myself not terribly impressed with this, since a) far too many amateur genealogists claim royalty in their background and I won’t be convinced it’s even remotely plausible until I do the research myself since I’ve seen how other amateur genealogists have classified people I actually spent time with and from a reliability perspective it is … not pretty, b) large swaths of Earth’s population are in line for the English throne if you cast the net wide enough, and for me to exercise my claim would require a catastrophic depopulation event the likes of which would probably leave me as the only person in London, and c) Edward I was kind of an asshole even by the generous standards of English kings. But it was interesting to see.
5. Kim and I went to the nearest Apple Store the other day to go to one of their classes on how to get more out the iPhone camera, and it was useful if somewhat odd to go to a retail store for classes on how to use their product. The instructor was exceedingly enthusiastic and I did learn a few tips and tricks, and perhaps I’ll be able to do more than just point and tap with it. It’s lighter than my DSLR and raises fewer concerns from officious docents at historical sites when we travel, so we’ll see how it goes.
6. At some point one of the many felony indictments against der Sturmtrumper has to result in conviction, right? He can’t keep oozing his way through the system without consequences, right? Don’t answer that. I already know the answer and I don’t want to hear it.
7. I’m trying to go through some of the boxes of papers I pulled out of my mom’s storage unit after she died, most of which were untouched after my dad died, and it’s interesting what my parents felt was worth saving. I suspect my own children will have the same response someday, though perhaps I’ll try to edit things down before it gets to that point.
8. Did you know it’s Easter weekend? This came as a bit of a surprise to me, which probably says something about the current state of my life. It’s just going to be us this tomorrow, as the larger family event has been pushed back a bit to accommodate everyone’s schedules, so we’ll see how things go.
9. I finally ordered more Cooper Sharp cheese from the only place in the US which will ship it to me, apparently – if you go to the website for the manufacturer they redirect you there. It arrived promptly and then I had to take it over to the supermarket deli where they sliced it for me last time and then convince them that this was acceptable. Fortunately the manager remembered me and okayed it, and now I have a Supply. I am a happy Philadelphian.
10. The Flyers continue in a playoff position with less than ten games remaining in the season, which is a place that nobody expected them to be in back in October. They’re a fun team to watch and I hope they make it in. I suspect they won’t go far, but then they weren’t supposed to be this close at all so who knows what will happen. It beats paying attention to the news.
2. Somewhere in Hong Kong is a person using Chrome on a Mac who has been pinging this blog over a thousand times a day for the last few weeks and I have no idea what they’re getting out of this exercise other than older. There can’t be any money in it. Whatever useful information I might have was probably already sold by the guy in Singapore who did this a few months earlier. Drop me a note and say hello, my guy.
3. It’s not even April and we’re already making travel plans for summer and in some cases it’s clear that we might have waited too long but in other cases we’re pretty much good to go. We’ll see. But we’re going to take advantage of the opportunities as best we can while we can, because at some point there will come a time when those windows close. I’m already in my Travel Anxiety stage of thinking we could just stay home and relax instead, but I know from experience that I will have a very good time once the process is underway so I just ignore it. I have no baseline expectation of comfort and I do like being other places even if the set-up for it drives me mad. So on we go.
4. I went back to FamilySearch to see what new stuff was there, after a long hiatus where I have been mostly plinking around on Ancestry when I manage to find time to do this at all. FamilySearch organizes their search results quite differently, but once you get the hang of it you can find some interesting things. I looked up my grandmother and found a family tree she’s in, and if the guy who put it together is correct I may be somewhere in line for the English throne, as my grandfather – the one who flaked off in 1940 – can claim descent from Edward I. I find myself not terribly impressed with this, since a) far too many amateur genealogists claim royalty in their background and I won’t be convinced it’s even remotely plausible until I do the research myself since I’ve seen how other amateur genealogists have classified people I actually spent time with and from a reliability perspective it is … not pretty, b) large swaths of Earth’s population are in line for the English throne if you cast the net wide enough, and for me to exercise my claim would require a catastrophic depopulation event the likes of which would probably leave me as the only person in London, and c) Edward I was kind of an asshole even by the generous standards of English kings. But it was interesting to see.
5. Kim and I went to the nearest Apple Store the other day to go to one of their classes on how to get more out the iPhone camera, and it was useful if somewhat odd to go to a retail store for classes on how to use their product. The instructor was exceedingly enthusiastic and I did learn a few tips and tricks, and perhaps I’ll be able to do more than just point and tap with it. It’s lighter than my DSLR and raises fewer concerns from officious docents at historical sites when we travel, so we’ll see how it goes.
6. At some point one of the many felony indictments against der Sturmtrumper has to result in conviction, right? He can’t keep oozing his way through the system without consequences, right? Don’t answer that. I already know the answer and I don’t want to hear it.
7. I’m trying to go through some of the boxes of papers I pulled out of my mom’s storage unit after she died, most of which were untouched after my dad died, and it’s interesting what my parents felt was worth saving. I suspect my own children will have the same response someday, though perhaps I’ll try to edit things down before it gets to that point.
8. Did you know it’s Easter weekend? This came as a bit of a surprise to me, which probably says something about the current state of my life. It’s just going to be us this tomorrow, as the larger family event has been pushed back a bit to accommodate everyone’s schedules, so we’ll see how things go.
9. I finally ordered more Cooper Sharp cheese from the only place in the US which will ship it to me, apparently – if you go to the website for the manufacturer they redirect you there. It arrived promptly and then I had to take it over to the supermarket deli where they sliced it for me last time and then convince them that this was acceptable. Fortunately the manager remembered me and okayed it, and now I have a Supply. I am a happy Philadelphian.
10. The Flyers continue in a playoff position with less than ten games remaining in the season, which is a place that nobody expected them to be in back in October. They’re a fun team to watch and I hope they make it in. I suspect they won’t go far, but then they weren’t supposed to be this close at all so who knows what will happen. It beats paying attention to the news.
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
Meet Me In St. Louis (reprise)
I don’t really have a spring break this year. I have an online class that never actually ends – students sign up for 90-day periods and every month a new group climbs aboard and an old group falls off the back end. I teach a remote class for a campus whose spring break was last week, and Home Campus has this week off. Not counting the online class, I basically get two “half-breaks” with a weekend of overlap in between.
Naturally, we had to do something for that weekend.
Way back in 2011 we took Oliver and Lauren to St. Louis to get away for a bit from the swirling madness of Governor Teabagger (a wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Industries) and his assault on Wisconsin and we hit as many of the tourist sites as we could bounce off of on a long weekend. We went to the Gateway Arch. We sat in the Dred Scott courtroom. We spent a glorious day at the City Museum and if you have or know any children between 4 and 11 you must take them there – it is by far the best children’s museum I have ever been to. We had gooey butter cakes at Gooey Louie’s and spaghetti at Amighetti’s and generally had a grand time and many fond memories of the city.
This year Lauren had too much to do in her semester and Oliver preferred to stay home, so when we decided to go back to St. Louis it was just me and Kim making the trip.
We left Thursday right after work and headed south through the wilds of Illinois, which is a very long and very flat state. Pretty much the only memorable part of it was when we stopped for gas at some little town by the highway and I noticed the tall stack of Ammosexual Weekly newspapers right outside the men’s room, because clearly there aren’t enough people in this country defending firearms. I do wonder about this country sometimes. Well, most of the time to be honest. Not all the time. Sometimes I sleep.
The apartment where we stayed in St. Louis was on the fifth floor of a refurbished factory building in a neighborhood full of old factory buildings – one of those post-industrial neighborhoods that real estate people like to describe as “up and coming,” which means that it’s not as dangerous as it was five years ago but you still have to search a bit for amenities and everything you walk by is behind at least one fence and two locks. At one point we walked over to what Google Maps insisted was a grocery store that turned out to be a wholesaler for a local pizza chain. Needing to be buzzed in was probably a good tip-off, as were the rather puzzled (but friendly) office staff we found there. In the end it was a pretty nice area if you enjoy urban post-industrial landscapes, as I do. There was free parking right on the street in front of the place – we never did pay for parking the whole time we were in St. Louis – and there was a nice little café a few blocks away where we had breakfast on our first morning there. The café definitely catered to the post-industrial theme, all decorated in black and metal with the only real splash of color in the place being what might have been a raised dance floor shaped like a gear and painted bright yellow. The food was good, though.
The apartment was the sort of place that made you feel you should be wearing flannel and drinking an IPA. It was clean and comfortable and perfectly fine for everything we needed, but entirely made of exposed concrete, bricks, and a color scheme that was mostly black, white, and grey. I’m not sure why they coated the hardwood floor with grey laminate but I assume there was a reason. The kitchen had been stocked by someone who had heard of kitchens and thought they were fascinating but had never actually tried to cook anything or handle a hot saucepan. There were no hot pads, but there was a foosball table by the window. We thought that was a nice touch, if somewhat inexplicable. It had immense windows in every room but no curtains or shades of any kind, which is fine on the fifth floor but made for some early mornings as the sun came in. We’d watch the birds play around on the cell tower outside of the bedroom.
Naturally, we had to do something for that weekend.
Way back in 2011 we took Oliver and Lauren to St. Louis to get away for a bit from the swirling madness of Governor Teabagger (a wholly owned subsidiary of Koch Industries) and his assault on Wisconsin and we hit as many of the tourist sites as we could bounce off of on a long weekend. We went to the Gateway Arch. We sat in the Dred Scott courtroom. We spent a glorious day at the City Museum and if you have or know any children between 4 and 11 you must take them there – it is by far the best children’s museum I have ever been to. We had gooey butter cakes at Gooey Louie’s and spaghetti at Amighetti’s and generally had a grand time and many fond memories of the city.
This year Lauren had too much to do in her semester and Oliver preferred to stay home, so when we decided to go back to St. Louis it was just me and Kim making the trip.
We left Thursday right after work and headed south through the wilds of Illinois, which is a very long and very flat state. Pretty much the only memorable part of it was when we stopped for gas at some little town by the highway and I noticed the tall stack of Ammosexual Weekly newspapers right outside the men’s room, because clearly there aren’t enough people in this country defending firearms. I do wonder about this country sometimes. Well, most of the time to be honest. Not all the time. Sometimes I sleep.
The apartment where we stayed in St. Louis was on the fifth floor of a refurbished factory building in a neighborhood full of old factory buildings – one of those post-industrial neighborhoods that real estate people like to describe as “up and coming,” which means that it’s not as dangerous as it was five years ago but you still have to search a bit for amenities and everything you walk by is behind at least one fence and two locks. At one point we walked over to what Google Maps insisted was a grocery store that turned out to be a wholesaler for a local pizza chain. Needing to be buzzed in was probably a good tip-off, as were the rather puzzled (but friendly) office staff we found there. In the end it was a pretty nice area if you enjoy urban post-industrial landscapes, as I do. There was free parking right on the street in front of the place – we never did pay for parking the whole time we were in St. Louis – and there was a nice little café a few blocks away where we had breakfast on our first morning there. The café definitely catered to the post-industrial theme, all decorated in black and metal with the only real splash of color in the place being what might have been a raised dance floor shaped like a gear and painted bright yellow. The food was good, though.
The apartment was the sort of place that made you feel you should be wearing flannel and drinking an IPA. It was clean and comfortable and perfectly fine for everything we needed, but entirely made of exposed concrete, bricks, and a color scheme that was mostly black, white, and grey. I’m not sure why they coated the hardwood floor with grey laminate but I assume there was a reason. The kitchen had been stocked by someone who had heard of kitchens and thought they were fascinating but had never actually tried to cook anything or handle a hot saucepan. There were no hot pads, but there was a foosball table by the window. We thought that was a nice touch, if somewhat inexplicable. It had immense windows in every room but no curtains or shades of any kind, which is fine on the fifth floor but made for some early mornings as the sun came in. We’d watch the birds play around on the cell tower outside of the bedroom.
Also, the place howled when the wind blew. It would have been a great spot to have a small Halloween party.
Getting in took us a while to figure out. You needed an app. The rental place sent us a link and that took you to an app of some kind with a list of buttons, and you brought your phone to the sensor for the main gate and pressed that button to get it to unlock, and then you repeated this with the main door and the elevator. There were other buttons we never did use. I’m not sure what you would do if you forgot your phone.
Friday was the warm day so we spent as much of that outside as we could. We walked up to the café, then walked down to the pizza wholesaler (waving at the City Museum along the way) before heading off to see the Botanical Gardens. It’s late March so not much was in bloom but it was a lovely place to wander around and see the various plants and sculptures. The biggest thing was the Climatron, a giant geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller’s architectural firm and stuffed with tropical plants and blown glass sculptures.
We walked all over the place. There were a few things in bloom despite the season and some interesting things to see, and in the end I got to see what a tea plant looks like which made me unreasonably happy.
For lunch we went over to a place called The Foundry, which turned out to be – wait for it – a refurbished factory, though this one had been converted into retail space rather than apartments, in this instance a giant food court full of local vendors. There were a LOT of them, everything from Afro-Caribbean chicken to St. Louis pizza to desserts and wine. There were a lot of chicken places, actually. I decided I’d try one of the things that St. Louis is known for and have toasted ravioli, which is exactly what it sounds like and very tasty. I’m not sure what my Italian ancestors would have thought of it. My guess is that would have been puzzled but happy to eat it if you put it in front of them. Practical people, my ancestors.
From there we went out to the Hill, which is the Italian-American neighborhood in St. Louis. It is a mass of groceries, bakeries, churches, festivals, and brightly painted streets. We went to two different little grocery stores to stock up on whatever looked good to us and I can highly recommend the garlic butter at DiGregorio’s because that stuff rocks. The only issue was that almost everything there closes at 5pm, and the bakery we went to was actually closing at 4 when we walked in at 3:55 but they let us pick a handful of cookies and then wouldn’t let us pay for them. They were really good cookies. You can’t beat a good Florentine. We stopped at a homemade soap shop as well and they gave us the tour of the back room where they make the stuff. Kim and I had our own soapmaking business for seven years so we knew a lot of what they were saying but it was a very nice tour and I ended up buying a bar of their soap because I could tell it was good stuff and they were really friendly. We also found a little café that had cannoli, which we ate outside.
After resting a bit at the apartment we decided to try another of the foods that St. Louis is known for and sought out some barbecue. I love barbecue. It is one of my favorite food groups, and the main problem with finding barbecue in St. Louis is narrowing down your choices. We ended up at a place in a neighborhood called University City (for obvious reasons) and it was also very good. We ate well in St. Louis, though I never did get a gooey butter cake. I know how to make them, though. Perhaps I’ll do that soon.
The drive back to our apartment was kind of odd, though. University City is a fairly affluent area, as you would expect in a neighborhood that caters to college students, and our apartment was in an area that was a bit rough around the edges but perfectly fine. But in between we drove through literally two miles of abandoned houses – block after block after block of them, maybe one house on a block with lights on. The staggering inequality of this country jumps out at you now and then, and it was a bleak sort of end to the day.
Saturday was significantly cooler and started early, as the sun rose into our bedroom and the birds played in the cell phone tower.
Our first stop was the Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, a gorgeous structure covered in glass mosaics. Whoever designed them was really good at their job because they have a way of glowing in the sunlight that makes them seem almost backlit and the whole thing really is amazing.
Also, they have mosaics for things that you don’t often find in cathedrals. One celebrated both the Religious Liberty Decree from the 1965 Vatican Council and the Racial Justice Decree from St. Louis in 1947. Another was the city seal of St. Louis.
Plus there was an intriguing mishmash of styles. This one has some rather classic Byzantine iconography surrounding what looks like an illustration from a 1950s illustrated Bible.
From there we went to the St. Louis Art Museum, or SLAM as it’s colloquially known. I am not making that up.
It’s free to the public, though they have specific exhibits sometimes that have a ticket price – there was a giant Matisse exhibit that we thought about seeing when we arrived but by the time we got to where the exhibit actually was we were pretty much museumed out and were glad to get back to the apartment. But in between those two points we had a good time. The museum has a pretty extensive collection covering a lot of periods and places – there are things from ancient Rome, from Africa, from medieval Europe, from Oceana, and a pile of modern stuff (I counted four Picassos), and you could happily spend a day there if you enjoy art. I liked this ancient Andean cat pottery, just because I like cats, and this 18th-century English soup tureen because it’s just turtles all the way down.
My favorite, though, was this painting. It’s Dutch, from the early 17th century, and I love the fact that she’s smiling in it. So many of the people in these paintings are just so deadly serious and it’s nice to see someone who looks like they might actually be enjoying their day.
Yes, I’m aware of what the painting actually is. No, I don’t care.
On our way back to the apartment we decided to take a detour and find an Eastern European bakery, since that’s Kim’s heritage. We got to know some of the roads in St. Louis pretty well over the weekend and never once ran into traffic, not even on the freeways during rush hour. So haring off in search of new bakeries seemed like a perfectly reasonable plan, and eventually we found a couple and made our purchases.
We also found this.
You can’t tell from the photo but the blades were slowly spinning. It appeared to be a restaurant of some kind, but it is a surreal thing to be driving down the streets of St. Louis in search of Eastern European bread and see a functioning windmill at the next traffic light.
Our final adventure in St. Louis was to go to a soccer game. St. Louis has an MLS team that was scheduled to play DC United that evening, and the stadium was all of three blocks from our apartment. You’re supposed to get there early, as they have all sorts of food vendors (all local) at the stadium and the crowd of supporters gets fired up long before kickoff. We walked over and found ourselves weaving through the massed superfans and their drums.
We found some barbecue and a good spot to eat it, and then headed to our seats. We were fairly close to the field.
It’s a really nice stadium, actually. It’s new – only a couple of years old, in fact – and the seats are a bit snug but the sightlines are great and it’s a good place to watch a game. The game was sold out, which tells you that the team gets a good amount of support. The superfans get the north end and there are signs warning you that you’re not allowed in that section wearing opposing gear and that your views might be obstructed by the giant flags people wave. It was interesting to see just how socially progressive the views of the superfans actually were. The guy waving the LGBTQ flag with the team’s logo superimposed on it was there all game, and on the way in I noticed one of the superfans with a large button prominently displayed on his jacket that said “Fuck Abortion Bans,” to which I could only nod in agreement.
Eventually they introduced the players, sang the national anthem, and started the game. Nobody sat down. The only reason they have seats at all in this stadium is so you know where to stand. The superfans kept up the drumming and singing for the entire game and they had some good songs. My favorite was the one to the tune of We’re Not Going to Take It, which went “We’re St. Louis City / Who are you?” – they did that at kickoff and at random moments throughout the game and we all sang along.
It was a pretty good game, though it was a lot chippier than the ref bothered to notice – there were a lot of fouls uncalled – and the opposing goalie was deeply annoying in his time-wasting tactics. After not doing much of anything for 87 minutes, the ref started handing out yellow cards like confetti after that, almost entirely for time wasting. There were originally going to be 10 minutes of added time but that got stretched to 14 so we had a lot of bonus soccer. We had a great time watching the game and it ended in a 2-2 draw after St. Louis was awarded a penalty kick late in the second half. There was a group of guys behind us who kept up a running commentary on pretty much everything that happened – they were a lot of fun to listen to.
We walked back to the apartment, wound down a bit, and the next day we headed off back home, back to our regularly scheduled lives already in progress.
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