Auld Acquaintance

 

with apologies to George Herriman

So, it's finally over.

Yes, of course, nothing is really changing: the Virus is still here, the fate of the Senate races in Georgia (and therefore the Senate) are still undecided, and Inauguration Day is still three weeks away. Nonetheless, it will feel good to close the calendar book or rip the last sheet from the wall and at least pretend to start afresh.

This year's turning has its own special spin for me, what with the whole Interim president thing officially staring at 12:01 am 01/01/21. It's going to be a tough row to hoe, but the fortune cookie I received with our holiday dinner gives me great hope:

Not only is it a true fortune, in the sense of being an actual prediction rather than an old adage or generic advice, but the "Learn Chinese" vocabulary word is work, so that's all rather fitting.

As we took our walk, today to include Marine Park, Coco suggested that we each find a rock to symbolize the new year. Mindful of this fortune, I chose one that reminded me of a distant mountain range on the horizon, emblematic of the journey ahead, difficult to traverse, but leading to better things. Of course, my geekitude couldn't let it alone there, so I combined it with one of my D&D minis for this diorama of the Indomitable Spirit of Accomplishment:

On a tangent for a moment: I have mused before about the duality of the Gnome Monk and Dwarf Bard that echoes on my life. I like this fellow because he could be either a large gnome or a small dwarf, and stripped down as he is, who knows what his occupation is. That he appears o be in a kilt and Doc Martens is just a bonus.

(Actual Gnome Monk and Dwarf Bard)

So, back to business: I have played around with resolutions from time to time, but I prefer to think of them as course corrections or resetting of routines. There's just a few things I want to do differently, besides going dry for January (which is fairly routine for me). 

I need to get out of the doomscrolling habit, especially in the morning, so I may actually sleep in later rather than spend so much morning coffee time on news sites and Twitter.

That morning stretch will be better spent extending my exercise time rather than soaking in the bad news and worse comments. I have been trying out some different routines, both bodyweight and dumbbell based, and will try to establish a good mix and rhythm to continue and expand my practice.

I am also going to be very diligent for the first weeks of the new year in unsubscribing to everything I don't want to receive, even the stuff I support. Evey charity I have donated to, every political campaign I have given to, and half the websites I have visited send me email, sometimes more than once a day, and it's wearing me out. Time to check out for a bit.

And I need to carve out more time to read for pleasure. I am hoping that suspending law school will allow for that.

Besides those few things, we'll just keep on keeping on. As I said at the start, it's not like the world is actually gonna change tomorrow.

But it's nice to believe that perhaps it can.

Let me just end with perhaps my favorite picture of the year:

Happy Covid New Year, everyone!

Boxing Day, whatever that is

So, in some places today is Boxing Day, unless it it isn't, because you think it's supposed to be the first weekday after Christmas, not the very next day; or if you're in a place that always celebrates it on Monday; or if it is officially Boxing Day, but you're Canadian, so you'll get a compensatory day off next week since it falls on weekend; and we're supposed to give money or gifts or leftover food to people in need, or workers, or vendors, but it's getting hard to give to service providers, since Boxing Day is holiday and they're not working.

Or maybe we just box.

Whatever, we don't have that day here in the Republic anyway, so happy Saturday.

Yesterday's celebratory day was fun and fine. And we had a good breakfast, did a little low-key gifting, took a nice long walk through the empty neighborhood, and spent the day relaxing and listening to music and or running the Godzilla film festival.

Coco has set up a jigsaw puzzle station in the living room, right behind the couch, near where I do my daily crossword puzzle. "Puzzle corner" has a lot of sweet warm energy in it now, and I expect it will see a lot of use and we begin the long climb up from the darkest day back into spring.

The dip into the early era of the Godzilla series has been fascinating so far. I skipped Gojira, since it is entirely too serious and dark for the holiday. The second installment, Godzilla Raids Again, is surprisingly robust and affecting, a sequel that changes the tone a bit but still holds together as a serious adventure, even as it initiates the classic monster v. monster trope. King King v Godzilla was apparently only available in Americanized version, which is pretty terrible - although after reading the accompanying text, I'm not sure even the Japanese version would rise about its inherent gimmickry. Mothra vs Godzilla recovers its balance and keeps its footing as the first official crossover movie; and Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster marks Godzilla's turn from a pure threat to sometime defender of earth, a chose that had both positive and negative consequences. Next up is Invasion of the Astro-Monster, and I am looking forward to seeing how American actor Nick Adams does in the original Japanese version.

I had planned to prepare a fine dinner centered on vegetarian roast, but I failed to read the fine print that said to thaw the roast in the refrigerator for 24 hours. We pivoted to Plan B: takeaway Chinese food. Turned out to be pretty dang good, and it was a nice reminder of some past holiday dinners.

We capped the day with Wonder Woman 1984 and I gotta tell ya, it was a bit of disappointment. A lot of nice bits, some good visuals, and Kristen Wiig is great, but while the story starts out pretty strong, it really frays in the last act, losing coherence. A case of the movie's reach exceeding its grasp, I think. There were some nice little easter Eggs for the fans, and I do appreciate that Wonder Woman used her lasso for most of the actin, rather than a shield and sword.

Anyway, I hope your holiday was filled with as much good tidings as ours. Maybe next year we'll actually be able to do our apple pancake thing with friends.

Season Greetings

So, it's that holiday time again - the ones we celebrate around here are Solstice, Hanukkah, Xmas, Isaac Newton's Birthday, and New Year's, but YMMV, of course.

A few days before Solstice, I was chatting with a friend, another early bird, who was looking forward to the days getting longer, since she and I both get up and work for a few hours before daybreak. I burst her bubble by sharing that while the days get longer starting December 20, the dawn itself continues to be later for some time, and doesn't get back to its December 17 time until January 13. The truth hurts.

Hanukkah was noted by inclusion in the Hallmark Channel's Holiday movie lineup (Love, Lights, Hanukkah! with Ben Savage and Marilu Henner among the cast), I guess as part of the ongoing diversification efforts of that most vanilla of cable channels. Neither I nor that selfsame friend from the prior paragraph could last more than twenty minutes: it was just the same old stuff, but with latkes.

Xmas has been looming large this year. Perhaps because of the pandemic and our not being in Hawaii or Palm Springs, Coco is feeling particularly nostalgic for the old days of her Rudolph Christmas traditions - we actually watched the 1969 animated Frosty the Snowman special the other night, and I have to tell you, it is objectively awful. Seriously bad. I am not sure I will be able to stand sitting through any more, and I am sure there will be some.

Isaac Newton's Birthday has been pretty low-key lately - that has always been a more public sort of affair, and with friends at a remove this year, the apples and prism and rainbows will have to wait. Of course there's a new Apple Day tradition rising in our house, although it's hard to say how it is related to the Father of Modern Science...

Here's a picture of that solstice wreath in situ, as it were:

But what's that new piece of art over the TV?

Why yes, it's the Criterion Collection Godzilla: The Showa-Era Films, 1954–1975. You may remember that last year saw a running festival of 11 Godzilla movies (plus two Mothra films) from the 80s to 2000. This year we go top shelf with the original run starting with the classic Gojira. We'll open the package tonight, drool over the artwork and special features included in the set, and start 30 hours of rompin' stompin' Godzilla action.

For those who care, here's the entire ouvre:

Showa Era (this is what's in the new set)

Gojira

Godzilla Raids Again

King Kong Vs Godzilla

Mothra vs Godzilla

Ghidorah, the Three Headed Monster

Invasion of the Astro-Monster

Ebirah, Horror of the Deep

Son of Godzilla

Destroy all Monsters

Godzilla's Revenge

Godzilla vs Hedorah

Godzilla vs Gigan

Godzilla vs Megalon

Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla

Terror of Mechagodzilla

Heisei Era

The Return of Godzilla*

Godzilla vs Biollante*

(*These two are very hard to find and were not included with the rest of Heisei and Millenium eras in last year's set)

Godzilla vs King Ghidorah

Godzilla and Mothra: Battle for the Earth

Godzilla vs Mechagodzilla II

Godzilla vs Space Godzilla

Godzilla vs Destoroyah

Millennium Era

Godzilla 2000: Millennium

Godzilla vs Megaguirus

Godzilla, Mothra, and King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All Out Attack

Godzilla Against Mechagodzilla

Godzilla: Tokyo SOS

Godzilla: Final Wars

Reboot Era

Shin Godzilla (anti-bureaucracy version - this is next on the list)

Miscellaneous

Always Sunset on Third Street (Sounds like a charming art film with a Godzilla appearance treated matter-of-factly - rare and I want it)

Americanized Films and American Reboots 

Godzilla: King of the Monsters  (American version of 1954’s Gojira with Raymond Burr)

Godzilla 1985 (American version of 1984’s Return of Godzilla  - with Raymond Burr reprising his role!)

Godzilla (Awful Matthew Broderick version)

Godzilla (New shared monsterverse franchise)

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Godzilla vs Kong

Perhaps we'll have all of these someday, plus some more Mothra for Coco (she loves Mothra) and we can implement the Twelve Days of Kaiju...

And lastly, New Year's Day is just around the corner, and while nothing will really change with the tolling of midnight and the dropping of the ball and all that, I don't think anyone will deny that it will feel good to close the books on this terrible year. Even though the pandemic is still raging, and Georgia won't have flipped, and the inauguration will still be three weeks away, there will be some sense of satisfaction to seeing 2020 in the rear view mirror. And as some Twitter wag put it, this is one January when no one will have trouble writing the correct year on their checks.

Meet the Ofs

So, some time ago, I got myself a life-size replica of the Venus of Willendorf. There were a few different motivations for this choice of decoration for my desk, but let's just say I got it because Walaka. In any case, it was a fine addition to the somewhat eclectic decor of the home office.

It was all good, but I thought perhaps Venus was a bit lonely and could use a companion. And who better to join the Venus of Willendorf than the Golem of Prague:

Of course, the two actually have nothing in common besides a middle name, but that was good enough for me. I have had as much passing interest in Golem stories as in paleolithic art, so it made some sort of sense.

And let me tell you, getting the Venus was a lot easier than finding a Golem! There's a jillion places selling Willendorf stuff online, and although I could find stories about Golem statues sold in Prague all over the web, it took about a year of waiting and checking until some Czech artisan actually put his stuff on Etsy where I could get at it.

There were a couple of bonuses in the package - a nice handwritten postcard was enclosed in the box, and some pages from a Czech culinary magazine were used as the packing material. Sweet!

Now we're one happy little band of co-workers, Venus, the Golem, and me. (Which sounds like it could be a great sitcom, if you ask me.)

And of course at this time of year in the office we celebrate all the holidays, so

Happy Yule! Happy Hanukkah!

stuff happens

 

Quote source

So, a few months ago I posted about starting a new adventure by starting law school.

Then, a few weeks ago, I posted about a new opportunity at work, becoming Interim President for 18 months or so.

Well, as much as I enjoy undertaking a heroic effort, I am realizing that these two endeavors may not be entirely compatible. 

Even now, just shadowing my current president in her last days before retirement, my time commitment to work is increasing enormously. As I look forward to next year, the understanding that the college is not going to replace my VP position (we are going to try to get through the interimcy with some re-org and a little additional admin support) is starting to sink in. I am going to be a busy boy.

Hoping that future-Walter, looking back from retirement, won't be too mad at me, I am pulling the plug on law school. For both personal and professional reasons, for my sake and the college's, I need to go all-in on making the interim presidency work as effectively as possible, without the sizable distraction of law school.

Looking at what's on the menu but not yet on my plate, I don't think I'll be wanting for intellectual challenge in the days to come. I also have my eyes on some position-specific professional development opportunities that would dovetail more smoothly with my new job and will be more useful in the shorter term, if not in my retirement days.

So, despite the old admontition about horses and streams, I think this is the best idea right now.

Once again, wish me luck...

Bits and bobs - blogging like it's 2005

So, I was looking at some old posts and saw that in a post from June 26 reflecting on the first 100 days of life under the pandemic, I signed off by saying "I can do another hundred days easy."

Well, by my reckoning it's now been 256 days and things show no sign of changing.

Today, instead of heading up to Canada and going to Chau Veggie for a holiday outing, we merely drove to an area lake for a nature walk and got takeaway from our favorite Vietnamese place on the way back. As we were returning to the parking area and passed a masked family coming in the other direction to begin their hike, we heard the father day to his daughter,  "Remember, when we meet other people, you have to pick a side and stay away." And the Vietnamese place once again has a barrier across the entry and no indoor seating, as we head back into stricter standards in an attempt to control infections.

That's life under Covid, heading into the ninth month, full steam ahead. The new normal. The now-normal.

Still not a burden, not really. Work goes on, school goes on, walks go on, binging Netflix-AmazonPrime-CBSAllAccess-HBOMax goes on, life goes on. If I have to telecommute full-time and have to skip browsing Value Village and have to play D&D on Roll20 and have to socialize by Zoom for a while, I can do that. On my head. Other people have it a lot harder.

Let's all do the right thing so we can get this done, and nobody has to bear any kind of burden at all, or get sick unnecessarily, or die.

***

I don't know if I have posted this before, but I wanted to do some drawing this long weekend, and it just feels like this:

***

So, I can remember drinking this when I was a kid. You had to be real careful, or it would foam all over the table...

                                    ***

Speaking of 2005, this little snippet put me in mind of this post from 15 years ago.

                                      ***

So, let's continue our counting down the days. It may be a while before we're free of the coronavirus, but we may soon shed a different loathsome disease.

Six-two-and-even, over and out.

It's Thursday

 

(No brand endorsement implied, I just really like the cleavering)

So, it's Thanksgiving, or as we call it in this house, Thursday off. Lots of reasons it is a problematic day: political, historical, dietary, and so forth - but I am not wanting to diatribe today.

As I have said before, it is a good thing, separate from any particular myth, to take a moment to be mindfully grateful for what we have. The annus horribilis that was 2020 doesn't seem at first glance to be fertile ground for reaping thanks, but really there's some good stuff in there.

Neither Coco nor I actually suffered directly from Covid-19, in the sense of becoming ill from coronavirus.

Both Coco and I kept our jobs, working remotely, and suffered no financial hits from the pandemic.

We have a home situation that includes two separate offices, so while we were working remotely those ten or so hours a day, we weren't on top of each other.

We live in an area where it is possible to take long walks in empty streets on on mostly empty trails, often with a view of the bay, helping to keep us grounded and sane.

We have ample access to technology that allowed us not only to work but to stay in touch with family and friends.

It would be unseemly to be less than grateful that we were able to weather this crisis relatively unscathed.

Similarly, the unpleasant political situation in which we find ourselves has not affected us directly. We are lucky enough not to be specific targets of the varieties of hate, both personal and institutional, that have manifest themselves in this country over the past few years.

Of course, what this creates is an even greater responsibility to do the right thing and support those who are less fortunate, materially and politically. I think we have done this - I hope we have done this. I know that the notion looms large in our conversations every day and is demonstrated in where we direct our time, energy, and resources.

And that is what I am most grateful for, in the end: the opportunity to do some good and help those who need it.

Let's all try that, okay?

Once more into the breach

 

So, yeah, this happened yesterday: the BTC Board of Trustees approved a contract for your humble servant as Interim President and Chief Academic Officer of the college from January 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022. I start shadowing the president on December 1 (no stonewalling the transition team in this transfer of authority).

Besides actually continuing the business of the college to provide workforce education, all that's on the agenda for the year and a half in the job is balancing the college budget in the face of declining revenue and financial support; reversing an enrollment drop that has hopefully hit bottom at 20% down; navigating a change to an entirely new computer system for all campus operations; launching a new Guided Pathways initiative that reconfigures curricula across the college; getting through an Evaluation of Institutional Effectiveness site visit from our regional accrediting body; and opening negotiations for the faculty collective bargaining agreement. Oh - and doing it all on Zoom under pandemic conditions, at least for the near future.

Piece of cake.

Seriously, I am pretty chuffed, as the Great Pottery Throwdown contestants were wont to say. (BTW, that's a great show.) The move to Bellingham and to BTC has been a good one on so many levels, and this is just another positive development stemming from that decision. It's a nice affirmation of what is now a 23-year career in the community and technical college system, and the support and confidence demonstrated by the Trustees, my president, and my colleagues is truly heartening. I thought that Vice President of Academic Affairs was going to be my last, best job... but I guess not.

I have no idea what the situation will be twenty months from now, or where I will wind up for the last few miles of my ride into the sunset, but I am excited to begin this new phase. I think this message from my current assistant accurately sums up what's in store:

Up, up, and away!

Selfie-indulgence

So, a few years back, I ran into this little clipping and posted it here, a memory from my bygone days as an English teacher.

Well, I was cleaning up my image files after installing a new computer, and it turns out quite a few of my students drew pictures of me. If you will forgive the self-absorption, here's a few more.

Early in my career, I came back from a class break to find this on the board. I think this one is from a winter quarter, since those wavy legs represent the long johns I wore under my kilt (I hope).

This one is a bad reproduction of little sketch left on a paper that student turned in with a request for some extra credit. He did capture the high socks and Doc Martens pretty well.

By the time of this "portrait" (a detail from a comic) I had switched to work shorts, or as one of my colleagues always called them, manprees.

This is a little more fantastical representation. A student was thrilled that I let his team produce a Dungeons & Dragons-themed final project and included me in the visual presentation.

This was done by a student who was constantly sketching, all throughout every class, unless specifically attending to a writing task. I am not sure what he was going for with the hat - I habitually wore a backward Kangol, a la Samuel L., and this looks like something different.

Not exactly anime, but something... a storyboard panel for a video I was interviewed for.

This is not by a student - the college's communications and marketing department wanted to use me as a model for an animated character. I left the school before I could voice it; I am not sure where the project ever went. A fun likeness, though.

Having left teaching and moved to administration, I no longer present in a classroom in front of students, but do frequently present in an auditorium in front of faculty. So now it is instructors who sketch me, not students. This impromptu portrait was created a year or so ago.

Art in the time of Covid: one of my faculty sketched me during a Zoom conference.

And lastly - a self portrait. Accurate representation of 2014-205 era Walaka on campus, down to the spiffy kicks I bought at DSW.

Cheers.

 

Independence Day

Have a safe and healthy 4th of July, everyone.

Forever

So, here's a story:

The year 1964 saw the arrival of the World's Fair in Flushing Meadows, Queens. The centerpiece was the Unisphere, the physical manifestation of the theme "Peace through Understanding". The Vatican sent Michelangelo's Pieta for its pavilion; people slid by on a moving sidewalk and viewed it behind glass. Walt Disney debuted It's a Small World at the fair; there was a monorail from AMF and ferris wheel that looked like a giant tire from Uniroyal and picture phones from Bell Telephone. I know; I was there, in wide-eyed wonder and amazement a this optimistic view of a shiny new future. I even got my hands on the souvenir camera, a Kodak instamatic branded with the fair's blue-and-orange logo, that I used a few months later to take pictures at my sister's wedding.

Not the actual camera we had, but one just like it.

But the camera wasn't really my souvenir; my prized takeaway was a dinosaur: specifically, the Sinclair Brontosaurus.

Sinclair Oil had a pavilion at the fair. Their logo was a  brontosaurus, I guess in recognition of the now-debunked idea that petroleum was formed from dead dinosaurs, so naturally their exhibit was the wonderful Dinoland.

After touring the life-size diorama, it was possible, in a miraculous display of modern manufacturing technology, to purchase at Dinoland a model dinosaur, vacuum-formed out of plastic right before your very eyes, in an automated machine with a clear viewing panel so the purchaser (or the purchaser's six-year-old child) could view the entire process - I think for all of twenty-five cents. With all the yearning of an overstimulated young boy, I just had to have one, and my mother relented and dropped the coin the mechanism. I would have my brontosaurus.

Now, although the Sinclair dinosaur logo did not follow the convention, it was the tradition when I was young that a brontosaurus was always depicted in illustrations with neck craned, looking backwards past their tail, usually standing in shallow water and sometimes with half-chewed vegetation dripping out of their mouth. It is an iconic image of my youth. Although lacking in detail, the souvenir dinosaur stuck to this standard.

Not the actual dinosaur I had, but one just like it

I was thrilled when I my still-warm thunder lizard dropped into the chute and played with it immediately and after we got home. Of course, there was one minor issue: even in the world of make-believe, it was hard for me to imagine a dinosaur striding forward majestically but looking backward all the time. It just didn't make sense for the brontosaurus to be interacting with my other toys but constantly looking away. So, perhaps remembering the lingering plasticity of the dinosaur when it came out of the machine, I thought I might, if I worked gently and steadily enough, just twiiiist the head around so it was facing forward.

Of course, cool by then, the neck just snapped, and I was left with a headless dinosaur. Elation crashed to despair, but there was nothing to be done. It's not like we were going back to the fair.

Which brings us to a coincidentally intersecting story:

The Brontosaurus - the Thunder Lizard - was discovered as a fossil and named in 1879, beginning its long reign as a fan favorite dinosaur, regardless of which direction it was looking. However, it was later determined that a dinosaur skeleton discovered in 1877, and called the Apatosaurus - the Deceptive Lizard - was in fact the same animal, and in scientific convention, the earlier name was the official name. Such was the power of  dinomania that the brontosaurus name still held sway for most uses in 1964, but scientific writings and later on even material for children and popular consumption used the "correct" apatosaurus designation. This transition caught the attention and raised the ire of brontosaurus purists, and is one of those touchstone issues that can polarize a room (and don't get me started on whether Pluto is a planet).

The reason for the confusion of the two creatures: the apatosaurus skeleton had no head.

All of which brings us to yesterday. In commemoration of the spectacle of world's fairs, my mother's love, the misguided optimism of youth, and the joy of dinosaurs, here's my latest tattoo:

Thanks, Tarah Pennington at Two Birds Tattoo for this wonderful  depiction of  a multilayered collection of memories and emotions.

Epilogue I:

Apparently I was not the only child who wanted the brontosaurus to be looking forward; a little research revealed that in the second year of the fair, Sinclair had the mold changed:

I might not have busted this one.

Epilogue II:

Ongoing research in the paleontology world has recently re-established Brontosaurus as a distinct genus and species. Vindication! Now, regarding Pluto...

Coda:

The full image: me and Uncle Ernie