Alongside

A younger girl fell on the release of the mass of Kaufman Bleacher Creatures before the Homecoming Football Game. Ava stayed behind and helped her get up. Then she ran alongside the girl the entire length of the football field to make sure the girl was okay. Very proud of my daughter!

50

Abbey Road by the Beatles is 50 years old today. This is my favorite album by The Beatles. The first time I heard it was the day I took the ACT test as a senior in high school. We had to drive an hour to Emporia State University to take the exam. After the exam my Dad took me to a record store in town and told me I could buy a cassette. He recommended Abbey Road since I had been getting into The Beatles due to a guitars class I was taking that year in high school.

I still remember putting that tape in the tape deck of our 1979 AMC Concord, rolling with the windows down since the A/C didn't work, and Here Comes the Sun starts playing. What I didn't know then was that the cassette had the first song on the A side and the B sides swapped from the original album order. Come Together should have been track one and Here Comes the Sun the first track on the B side. On the cassette those two songs were switched with one another.

That cassette became one of my favorite listens. Here Comes the Sun became one of my favorite songs. I remember making that trip from Emporia to Severy, Kansas for trumpet lessons many times and listening to that record with the wind blowing through the car. Years later my Dad sent me a postcard with the Abbey Road album cover on it. I just found that postcard recently and I treasure it.

This past July my son and I found an original vinyl pressing of Abbey Road at a second hand bookstore. I assumed the record was just a re-print. But after researching the printing number and cover label I realized we had lucked into a 1969 copy of Abbey Road LP.

I love this album. Although Let it Be would be the last Beatles album released, Abbey Road was the last record the group actually recorded. And what a way to end a band's run.

First Day of Fall

I used to not pay attention to the "official" change of seasons. Honestly, in Texas, you really can't tell much of a difference in the seasons. The Fall season is pretty short in Texas. I have to admit I miss the four distinct seasons that you experience when growing up in Kansas. Fall meant leaves changing colors, then falling off the trees and lots of raking. It meant college football season and OU playing Nebraska for the Big Eight Championship during Thanksgiving Weekend. Temperatures got cooler and you could feel a chill in the air. Jacket season. The days grow shorter, the time change at first is a welcome change in the routine.

Texas does have a fall season. It comes suddenly. One day it's hot then a cold front rolls in and suddenly it's fall. Fall in Texas means The State Fair of Texas which starts this weekend. However, it's usually still pretty hot when we go to the Fair. OU-Texas is now the only real fall rivalry game for Sooner fans (sorry OSU fans). My favorite radio show Live From Here (once known as Prairie Home Companion) starts back up in the fall, although now I usually watch the live stream of the show on YouTube rather than merely listen to it on the old radio. But the show has become a harbinger of the Autumnal season for me.

We are lucky, in Texas, when we get a real change in the color of our leaves. It does happen some years. Then they usually all fall in one weekend when a brisk wind blows through. I now have my son to help me rake. Hoping my daughter joins in the raking fun this year. There's something satisfying being in the cool air, raking those leaves into nice big piles, seeing actual progress in your task.

As I've gotten older and lost more and more of my loved ones I've been more intentional in trying to be mindful of the little joys of life. The arrival of Autumn has become one of the little sources of joy. Ritual is important and the arrival of the Fall Season is a nice little ritual to celebrate.

Memories

Me, My Dad and My Son at the Ballpark in Arlington in 2014, watching Texas play the visiting Royals. It would be the last game we got to see together before my Dad died of cancer.

The last days of The Ballpark in Arlington are upon us. I refuse to provide free advertisement for the insurance company that currently has naming rights for the Texas Ranger's baseball stadium.

I'm a Royals fan so my best memories of baseball are in Kauffman Stadium. But I've lived in the DFW area for over twenty years now and made annual trips to the Ranger's ballpark. Usually I was going to see the Rangers play the visiting Royals whenever they swung by town.

Even though I'm not a Rangers fan, I'm still ticked off that they are moving across the parking lot to a new stadium at the end of this season. The Ballpark in Arlington is only 26 years old. It's in great shape. It has all the modern conveniences and luxury boxes. Location is not an issue especially since the new stadium is literally right across the street.

So what's the problem? Climate control. The new stadium will have a retractable roof. It gets hot in Texas in July and August. Really hot. There were always a lot of empty seats during day games in the middle of the summer. Casual fans didn't like the heat. Ranger owners are convinced that attendance will grow if the casual fans are more comfortable during the hot summer months.

Whatever.

The reason for empty seats? Crappy baseball year in and year out. When the Rangers went to back to back World Series in '10 and '11 the place was full, even in the unbearable heat of August. Another problem? They made the old stadium too big. The new place will be much more intimate. They are cutting the seats by 10,000. Creates demand, supposedly.

Sure the Ballpark can get hot. I almost got heat stroke in the place multiple times. But we found ways to stay cool and we always had a great time.

Not only is this environmentally irresponsible, abandoning a recent construction, it's a theft of memories.

Baseball, more than any other game, is about generational bonds. Statistics in baseball are more scrutinized than any other sport because you can make cross-generational comparisons in a much more consistent way than most sports. Yes, the sport has changed dramatically over the years. But still, Babe Ruth's 60 home runs is an impressive feat today, even with the steroid era messing things up. Baseball is about long term connections over a very long time.

And the Texas Rangers are taking away a place where many memories were made, simply for the convenience of the casual fan. The original Arlington Stadium needed to be replaced. It wasn't originally built for major league baseball. It was obsolete and in bad shape. This Ballpark is still beautiful and in great shape. It has all the modern amenities. It is a modern ballpark that they are tearing down (well, not completely...apparently they are transforming it into a smaller venue for XFL games and concerts) after only 26 years.

This was the place I brought my son to see his very first Major League Baseball game. It was the place where my son and I got to watch a baseball game with my Dad for the last time before he died of cancer in 2014. Those are the two most poignant memories but there are dozens of wonderful memories that the Rangers are desecrating in the name of the almighty dollar. I will no longer be able to enjoy a game with my family at this stadium where so many memories happened because Ranger ownership thought they could squeeze their fans for more dollars.

If they cared about the fans, they would build a winning team. You have a winning team, the crowds will come. That's how it works. Don't let the rich white billionaires convince you otherwise. They just want to make money. Winning is incidental. Fans are incidental. Generational memories are incidental. 
 

Helpless and fearful people...

"Helpless and fearful people are drawn to magical figures, mythic figures, epic men who intimidate and darkly loom."

Came across that line in Don Delillo's White Noise. Written in 1985 yet appropriate for Trump supporters in 2019.

Experimenting with Chrome blogging

So I’m home with a sick kid. She’s fine. Went to the doctor. Just a viral thing. Anyway, decided to try blogging via my iPad. Haven’t mobile blogged since google made the terrible and stupid decision to eliminate the blogger app for both IOS and Android. That was a really dumb and annoying decision by Google. Anyway, I’m blogging via the Chrome browser to see if that’s an option. So, I’m going to post a random pic from my iPad along with this post and see how it goes. First pic on my roll was a screen shot of a doorway in Paris off of Google Earth.

Toulouse

A year ago today I was in Paris.

That was an amazing trip and I wish I was there today.

We were fortunate in many ways. We were able to climb to the top of the Cathedral of Notre Dame and see the roof and spire close up. Seven months later the roof and spire would be lost in a tragic fire.

A couple of months after our trip large and sometimes violent protests shut down much of central Paris. The Arc de Triomphe was marked with graffiti. The Champ Elysee was closed.

This week a transit strike has caused gridlock in central Paris.

All was peaceful while we were there. We enjoyed our trip immensely.

So last Saturday night I took my wife to a local French cafe on Knox Street in Dallas. This was our first visit to the Toulouse Cafe and it was fantastic. It truly looked and felt like a Parisian cafe. The food was amazing. It was a nice way to remember Paris.

Laughing

"He laughed to free his mind from his mind's bondage."

  - From Ulysses by James Joyce

TechApathy

How soon we become spoiled and accustomed to the technological luxuries of our life. Yesterday I was issued a new (or newer) iPad by my school district. This is my third iPad since being issued my first one ten years ago. I had asked for a new device since mine was showing its age. It was flaking out and shutting down apps more and more often. It's browser was running slow and becoming frustrating to use. The district had said they would get me a new one but it may take a few weeks. But one suddenly became available yesterday and they actually delivered it to my classroom.

Yes, I was happy to get a new iPad. But I started thinking about how excited we were ten years ago when we first got them. It was a super big deal. Ten years ago the iPad was a curiosity. Back then we were impressed with the simple act of the screen rotating from vertical to horizontal when turning the device. Simpler times. A few of my colleagues at other schools or friends had gotten them and they looked pretty cool. I wanted one. I wanted one bad.

So I was excited when our school district said they would be issuing iPads to teachers. But there was a catch. Teachers would have to write an essay saying how they would use the device in their classroom and why they should be issued one. Looking back now, it was pretty condescending. They had plenty of iPads to go around due to a grant. But they treated us like children and made us work for it. The administrators running the show back then are long gone and good riddance.

Well, we wrote our essays and everyone got iPads who wanted one. The essays were a joke.

The iPad did change a lot of my habits. It became my primary device for accessing the internet rather than using a laptop or my phone. I used an iPad app (Evernote) to take notes in graduate school and to file all sorts of things. Again, I found it much easier to take notes than writing or even using my computer. I sometimes use the iPad for reading on the Kindle App. And I watch a lot of programs on the YouTube, Netflix and Amazon Prime apps via the iPad. I use the iPad pretty much every day. It organizes my calendar, to-do lists, and emails.

But, yesterday, when I got the new (newish) one, an iPad Air, I wasn't quite as excited as ten years ago. In fact, I knew that I would have to spend some time setting it up and I wasn't looking forward to that. Having to log in to every app again and syncing iCloud, etc is a tedious exercise. How soon we become jaded.

This is my third iPad in ten years. Getting spoiled. Free iPads? How can I complain? And I admit, that after I got everything set up I was impressed with its processor speed, crystal clear screen resolution, improved graphics (since my last iPad had not been compatible with the last several updates) and light weight. It made realize how slow and out dated my old iPad had become. My old iPad had become ancient in just five years.

I hate how reliant I've become on technology. I also hate losing the wow factor when given a pretty sophisticated device. This thing would blow my 2009 mind!

Shakespeare and Co.

Ah, I get it now. How the famous bookstore got its name and why James Joyce hung out there so much. And why they have a few Joyce photos on the walls. It's in Ulysses of course.

NOOOO!!!!

Son takes photo of Dad right when CBS broadcast of Chiefs game is interrupted with 5 minutes left due to technical difficulties and network switches to Cleveland-Tennessee game.

The Ulysess Project

Yes, I'm still reading James Joyce's Ulysses. As I mentioned here, I'm still following my planned reading of two pages a day. Originally I was going to be done sometime in April 2020. But I didn't really read my daily two pages much during the summer. So I'm a bit behind schedule, which is not all that unexpected. But today I did make it to page 200. I consider that an achievement worth noting! Only 583 pages left to go!

The writing is still very obscure. It's hard to slog through sometimes. I have been using some online guides to help me along. Because sometimes I have no idea what I'm reading.

One observation of note. This week I came across the word "meh" in Joyce's text. It was also used in the proper context...a statement of apathy. I always believed that meh was invented by The Simpsons. Nope, page 171 of the Complete and Unabridged Text, reset in 1961 of Ulysses.

J and J

Jackson made his debut with his Junior High tennis team last night. He played a doubles match with his old friend, Jackson as his partner. Having two Jacksons playing together might make for some cool team names. Jackson Squared. J&J, etc. Jackson and Jackson are both 7th graders and defeated a team of 8th graders from Corsicana. There are only three 7th graders on the team and it was a nice debut.

#JeepsparkedbyJeeps

When you buy a Jeep you quickly notice other Jeep owners waving at you on the road. This is called the Jeep Wave. You also notice other Jeeps will magically appear by your Jeep in the parking lot. Here's a series of photos in recent weeks of Jeeps that either parked by Blue...or Jeeps I parked by just to keep the tradition going.

To See The World...

Blue

 

Me and Blue stopping at our local Taco Casa after our KC-Tulsa-Dallas Trip. 

One last post about the summer of 2019. Maybe.

When I bought my Jeep in April I have to admit I was a bit nervous about how it would do on long trips halfway across the country. Would there be enough storage space for a family of four's gear? How it would handle bad weather? Would I be blown all over the road in high winds? Would the three-piece hard top leak in rainy conditions. Would I regret making this purchase?

The answer is absolutely no...I do not regret buying the Jeep. It handled long distance travel fantastically. I ran into some high winds and it was fine. I drove through some torrential downpours driving both on my way to Kansas City from Indiana and on our drive to Florida. No leaks. In city driving the Jeep handles more nimbly than any other car I've owned except our Mini Cooper. On highways the Jeep is solid and dependable.

So yes, Me and the Jeep bonded over our summer travels. He finally got a name...Blue. Blue because of the color and also reminiscent of Blue the Raptor in Jurassic World. Blue is still young. We just crossed 10,000 miles. Nothing has gone haywire yet. I do have a recall to take care of soon. And if once the miles add up and problems start popping up then I might sing a different tune. But for now, Blue has been a great traveling vehicle.