I realized recently that my grandson James is as old as I was when I began remembering my life.

When I was five years old, we moved to Pampa, Texas.  I remember the stone house, the ponies we rode, the sound of the locusts, the vast open sky, and the soft fur of the rabbits that my sister and I kept in cages in the backyard. I remember not wanting to move back to Massachusetts in the middle of first grade. In Pampa, I was the only kid in my class who had ever seen an ocean.

Over a slice of pizza yesterday at a place on Huron Street, James talked about kindergarten. He pretty much likes it. Some of the girls have formed a club that he can’t join. He and my daughter wave discreetly at each other in the hallway on the days when her teaching job brings her to his school. His Grampa (me) had arrived at the pizza joint on a bicycle, wearing a blue helmet and a glow-in-the-dark yellow jacket. Will James remember any of this in 50 years? Perhaps. This possibility makes me especially mindful when I’m with him.

I remember my two grandfathers with great fondness and appreciation. My Dad’s father taught English at M.I.T. I remember him as reserved, kind, quiet, and musical. I knew he loved books, because there was a ton of them at their home on a hill in Sudbury, Mass. I have a few of his books here in my studio in Cambridge, Mass. When Grampa Edgerly finished a book, or perhaps when he bought it, he wrote his name and the year on a corner of the flyleaf.  So my volume of Keats’s Complete Poetical Works and Letters has his signature from 1930, twenty years before I was born.  My mother’s father owned and operated a sand and gravel business in Sudbury. I remember riding in his big dump truck and sitting in the cab of his clattering steam shovel. Grampa Stiles was a mischievous, playful, wiry-haired man who played poker and pulled quarters out of my ears. I am named after both of these men, and grateful that I can remember them.

My grandson is not a kid to be messed with. I see him making his way in the world with bold imagination and strong will. He was in motion the entire hour my daughter and I sat on a stone at the playground and visited. He journeyed to London at one point, first checking with us to find out whether you have to go through security when you travel by ocean liner. I said I didn’t think so, and then he was off, mixing reality with fantasy in a promising way.

Soon after James was born, I reserved an Internet domain name for him on GoDaddy. Assuming there will still be blogs 50 years from now, I like to imagine his future ruminations as a man of 61. What will he remember? That he was surrounded by love, I hope. And a grandfather who always seemed to be amazed and captivated by everything he did.

We’ll be pointing Henry westward later this morning, on the first leg of our drive back to Denver. Today’s destination: Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. This is not the seasonal migration, since we’ll return by air in mid-November for the holidays. It’s been a lengthy stay in the East, beginning in early June with the 2,000-mile drive here in our new Ford.

I watched a few races on the Charles yesterday, the first day of the annual Head of the Charles regatta. What a spectacle. The power and precision of the rowers inspire me to get out there next spring and lay down some miles in a club single from the Cambridge Boat Club. One of the races I watched was the men’s championship singles. I expected to see more exertion, humans reaching desperately for every ounce of strength they could muster. Instead, these guys seemed to flow like the river itself. They moved back and forth on their slides as if there was simply no other way to do it: legs first, then the arms pulling in the last of the stroke. Then again, and again, an unbroken harmony of motion moving upstream to the finish. This is what inspired me, actually. I’ve shed my initial awkwardness in a single during the past couple of years of rowing. I’m not fighting to stay upright with every stroke now, and sometimes it feels natural. But those championship scullers live in another country. I’d like to visit it a few times before the end of my race.

I always get weird before a big trip, so yesterday was prime time for nutty thinking. Throw in the fact that Cambridge carries me back forty plus years to my college days, and you’ve got the makings for a man weeping as he rides his Trek along Memorial Drive. Not quite, but I could feel the moisture gathering behind my eyes.  Then comes the ragtag Harvard Band, shuffling across the Anderson Memorial Bridge from the stadium to Harvard Square. I rolled to a stop at the intersection just before they started a new song. The air was crisp with the mulched aroma of fall, and everyone looked smart. If you closed your eyes, you’d think the great music was being played by professionals. Open them and you see the musicians arrive looking weird and fantastic, wearing their crimson blazers and yellow flowers behind their ears. Who knows why? They are out of step, in no particular order. If they’re like me, every one of them thinks he or she was the Admissions Department’s single error of judgement. But they play on, headed for Harvard Square and the rest of their lives. An alum from the Class of 1972 records their passing on his new iPhone 4S and feels sad and grateful for the passing of the years and the miles ahead.

Henry was officially welcomed to Massachusetts yesterday morning, and now he’s unpacked from the trek from Denver, settling into life in Cambridge.  We haven’t had a chance to see if he can digitally wiggle into a Harvard Square parking space yet or find his way to Whole Foods on River Street.  But he seems content, if a little out of place with the Colorado tags.

It’s gorgeous weather here – mainly sunny, fresh air instead of muggy, and green the way green is supposed to look. I remember my first visit to Casper, Wyoming, 30 years ago for a job interview, when the woman giving me a tour of the area exclaimed, “It’s so GREEN this year.” That was in May, and to her eyes the prairie was bursting with color. To me it looked tan.  I grew to love the subtle changes in color in Wyoming and the west, but out here color knows how to claim its place in nature, no fooling around.  It may have inspired Darlene to think color inside the house, as well.  I see tell-tale swatches taped to various walls, a sure sign that she is plotting a change.  In our apartment in Denver, there are about 40 different colors, and few walls even in the same room are the same hue.  I thought it would drive me crazy when she did the job a decade ago, but instead it’s enlivened the space and energizes us when whenever we’re there.

My plan is to mix biking and rowing here in Cambridge until our migration to Maine in August. I discovered this morning that if you leave Harvard Square at 5:30 a.m. for the Minuteman Bike Trail there is hardly any traffic on Brattle Street, Huron, and the Fresh Pond rotaries. This makes it easy to get to the trail at the Alewife T station, and then it’s clear sailing all the way to Bedford.  My morning rides take me just past Arlington Center.  I love it. It will take some gumption to head over to the Cambridge Boat Club after a long absence and see if I remember how to get a club single into the Charles. But there’s nothing like slicing along in calm water in a shell. Aerobic exercise, check. Joy of being alive, check.

So that’s the end of our Travels with Henry.  It’s a long drive from Denver to Harvard Square. I’m glad we’re here.

It’s a gray, chilly day so far in Harvard Square. I was surprised to find a free table at Darwin’s Ltd., our neighborhood’s classic independent coffee shop with attitude. The frosted lemon scone is delicious, and the dark-roast coffee is satisfying and hot. Thanks to Shazam on my iPhone, I know they’re playing “Embraceable You” performed by Claude Thornhill and his orchestra. And next up is “Don’t Explain” by Nina Simone. Just right. “Never complain, never explain,” was the personal motto of a guy I knew in Providence, Rhode Island. He never allowed himself to be rushed, and he was a talented sculptor. That was 30 years ago, and the last I’d heard he had returned to Montana.

I’ll return to Denver tomorrow morning after a week of family visiting and tech support, along with checking in on the exterior house painting project at our home here. Darlene has been hosting a quilting workshop at the Denver digs. We celebrated our 27th anniversary by phone and TXT, which we both felt sheepish about, as if we were violating a Rule of Romance. Can this marriage be saved? It already has been, thank you, and one of its salvations has been the freedom we feel to pursue independent adventures from time to time.

I’ve shared my table with a woman who was looking for an empty seat. She’s reading a Kindle and must be about my age, because her font size is set at the one I use. She has no interest in conversation, and neither do I.

It’s a typical Harvard Square crowd here at Darwin’s. Most of the laptops are Apple, and all of the paper reading devices are The New York Times. The guy across from me wears pants frayed at the cuffs, and one of his striped socks was put on inside-out. Completing his hipster ensemble is a red pressed shirt of expensive-looking fabric. The girl at the next table listens to something in black earbuds and is working on a Mac with three books stacked in front of it. The one on top is titled Philosophies of Mathematics. The old wood floor has a couple of faded Orientals with scone crumbs on them. Stuffed leather chairs alternate with round marble-topped tables. The music has turned up-tempo and contemporary with “Blind” by Hercules and Love Affair Feat. Amazingly, three seats have opened up, so get here fast if you’re in the area! I bet there will be an app for that, if there isn’t one already: Coffee Shop Seat Finder.

As my tablemate leaves I ask how long she’s been reading on a Kindle. “A year,” she responds. “I still read books, but this is good for travel. My mother gave it to me. She’s 83, and she reads only on a Kindle.” So that’s probably a Bingo on my guess of her age, since my own mother just turned 82, and, as it happens, reads mainly on a Kindle, too. Now the seat at my table is free. I wonder who will join me next? At 11 a.m., business is getting brisk here at Darwin’s. I’ll be joining my parents in about an hour at the Sheraton Commander Hotel, next to the Cambridge Common, where George Washington took command of his troops in July, 1775. The sun is out, and the new arrivals have begun ordering sandwiches instead of scones.

It’s a fantastic combination, dividing our time between downtown Denver and Harvard Square. The rhythms are different but similar, and I feel quite at home in each locale. I’ll make a note to write a companion post from my favorite Mile High coffee shop, which happens to be a Starbucks in Writers Square. Enjoy the coffee!

Stever Robbins creates a digital autograph at Porter Square Books

Stever Robbins, author of the  just-released Get-It-Done Guy’s 9 Steps to Work Less and Do More — Click here for Kindle version– gave a lively presentation yesterday at Podcamp Boston 5. In the evening at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, he made the first stop on what I’m sure will be a successful tour promoting the book.

“The key to working less is being on purpose,” Stever writes in Step 1.  He is a fellow Harvard Business School graduate, so I have some clue as to where he’s coming from. I’ve also followed his energizing podcast, part of Grammar Girl’s Quick and Dirty Tips empire.  At my Podcamp talk yesterday on e-books, I passed around my Kindle and other e-readers.  Stever checked every one for a copy of his book and found none – an omission which he brought to my attention with gusto. I rectified this by purchasing the Kindle copy during his talk later in the day.  And as you can see in the photo, he didn’t hesitate last night to provide a digital autograph by typing a note on the title page as it appears on my Kindle.

I’ve been a devotee of David Allen’s Getting Things Done – ( Kindle version ) – , a huge bestseller that launched an organizing cult and probably boosted the sale of labeler machines by a measurable amount. David Allen is a great guy, and I’ve attended a couple of his workshops.  Where David is calm and comfortable in a business suit, Stever considers a necktie to be a form of hangman’s noose.  He seemed ready to break out in song at any minute during his book reading.  In fact, he is collaborating with a friend in New York City to create a musical about file folders and — well, let’s just wait and see. It’s bound to be uniquely great.

Meanwhile, I’ve started a careful read of his book. I’ve written down my life purpose, and am going to give his 9 steps a shot.  The big thing is, if he succeeds in helping me free up time by getting things done more efficiently, I need to use that time well instead of filling it up with more distracting work that doesn’t advance my life purpose. I’ve heard this all before, but it’s good to hear it again from a fresh, new voice and to read it in a well-written book.  It helps when the author himself is on fire with desire to sing the new song of his own life’s purpose.

Go get ‘em, Stever!

Missy and Kes’s son Eli at the funeral service spoke of how expert his mother was at moving, because of all the moves she’d overseen for the family. She passed along her tips to her son, who found them very helpful. He passed along to us a son’s appreciation for her many competencies. But most of all, he said, she was very good at loving.

To move well from place to place is a skill worth having. Missy always undertook to remake and recreate every home they lived in. This makes me see that love is at the heart of moving well – and staying, too.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Photo by Steve Garfield of SteveGarfield.com at Boston Media Makers on May 2, 2010

As we settle in for our seasonal relocation to Cambridge, Mass., I’m thinking of how many great things have come into my life over the past few months because of the Internet.  I’m taking as my text for this rumination a book published this year by my friend Steve Garfield, Get Seen: Video Secrets to Building Your Business (Click here for Kindle edition.)

Steve’s book is about how to get seen using video, which he knows something about, since he was one of the first bloggers to figure out how to put video on a blog.  He created Steve Garfield’s Video Blog on January 1, 2004.  I’m thinking about video this morning, but more broadly, I’m thinking about the joy of risking any kind of exposure using the powerful tools of the Internet.

Here is a sample of what’s happened in my own life lately because of getting seen:

1. Yesterday, for the first time, I met in person a listener of The Kindle Chronicles who in a Facebook comment offered to help with a project I’d started to provide Kindles to active-duty soldiers in Afghanistan.  Ken Clark and I visited for a couple of hours here at the house, planning next steps for E-Books for Troops, and sharing some more of our stories.  With his help as co-founder, my initial idea has already reached an entirely new level, with our filing yesterday to create a non-profit organization, and I’ve met someone with a keen interest in things I care about, from EB4T to all things Apple, to the joys of family and reading.

2. Before Ken arrived yesterday, I met here for two hours with Adam Weiss, a brilliant podcasting consultant whom I met at Boston Media Makers, an event created and hosted every single first Sunday of the month by Steve Garfield.  Adam has helped me create show notes pages for my two podcasts, and yesterday he took me deep into the bowels of GarageBand to tweak the audio quality of the shows.

3. Podcasting about the Kindle and e-books has been fun, but the best part has been meeting listeners and fellow pioneers in the Kindlesphere.  My current posse includes Stephen Windwalker, Andrys Basten, Bufo Calvin, and Abhi.

4. The Reading Edge Facebook page is like a club I created in a tree house, where there is always someone hanging out that I want to visit with.

You get the idea.  I had friends and a life before the Internet, but in the past few months (and years) the connections I’ve made go way beyond what I could have imagined in normal hours.  I’m also pretty much of an introvert, which makes the Internet a comfortable way to begin getting seen.  You sit in a room with your laptop or iPhone or iPad and you type stuff, or upload video, photos, or audio.  You are alone at the same time you are connecting.  Perfect.  And if you keep it up, sooner or later the virtual images of people will lead you to being in their actual presence, at a PodCamp or your own living room.  You will be amazed at how your life can unfold.

It’s IT takes getting seen to really see what’s out there. There’s genius in it, and many possibilities to make a difference.

The Road to Harvard Square

1.

Cory Doctorow and Stephen King have hijacked my Kindle with great fiction reads.

My pre-ordered copy of King’s Under the Dome arrived, as promised, on Christmas Eve. It’s scary how well he tells a story.  I suspect that I will soon be drawn into a dead run toward the end of the story, even as the initial beckonings are small and odd.  A dome gets dropped over the sock-shaped Maine town of Chester Mills.  This ridiculous premise already seems plausible, because of gruesome bits like an unlucky woodchuck chopped in half on Dome Day.  Spoiler alert: If you don’t want to know how the story ends, don’t click on this Wikipedia item.

Doctorow’s Makers, downloaded for free from his site in .mobi edition, has taken longer to draw me into the story, even though story itself is a central artifice of the novel. It’s set in a troubling future, and you’ll never think of Disneyworld the same again.

2.

I like Chrome, the new browser from Google now available for Macintosh.  It’s slightly different from Firefox and Safari, but I can’t tell you how or testify to any of its advantages, except that you type search terms or URL addresses in the same place, called the “Omnibox.”  I like the pretty icon, which looks like a camera lens.  It’s peeking at me from the dock on my MacBook Air, saying, “click on me.”

3.

I’ve had it with the nook. The gee-whiz phase lasted about two weeks, peaking one night at the Barnes & Noble store in Chestnut Hill when I got a free oatmeal cookie by showing the puzzled barrista a coupon that had appeared on my nook once it found the B&N store network.  The same coupon appeared when I entered the palatial B&N store across from the Burlington Mall, so I got another cookie.  You could make your way across the country with your nook, apparently, grazing on free cookies at every store.  Except that the Burlington barrista did not check the coupon number, which was the same at each store.  If she had entered it in the cash register, perhaps there would have been a message: “Seize this impostor! He has already obtained his free cookie at the Chestnut Hill store.  He is a suspected Kindle provocateur.”

It was also cool to download two library books to the nook from the Denver Public Library, but there’s no way I’m going to finish them before they expire, and I doubt I’ll be able to renew them.

So after straying from my Kindle, I’m back home with fuller appreciation of its amazing tool set for reading.  For example, there is no way on the nook to search for a character’s name and see all the references to it, including the first, when the character enters the story.  With the Kindle, I can do this with ease, and then use the magic “Back” button to jump back into the story, with a clear sense of who this person is.  The nook’s dictionary is a joke. It’s painfully slow and awkward to maneuver the cursor to a word, and the definitions are truncated and lame.

I still don’t hope the nook fails.  Driving up to the Burlington B&N book palace, I had a strong sense of how many people work there, and how sad it will be if places like that cease to exist, never mind classy independent bookstores like the Tattered Cover in Denver and the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge. They guy at the nook kiosk in Burlington really knew his stuff.  How odd, though, to have an eBook sales desk in the midst of all those paper volumes.  Do the other sales people hate the nook guy? Do they look on him as their only hope to survive the coming revolution?  It’s a great story unfolding, and I’m glad I invested in a nook so I can follow it firsthand.  But for the pure joy of reading, I’m back to dancing with the eBook that brought me.

4.

I realized the other day that I am in my sixties.  I’ve been 59 years old since August, and that comforting “fifty” in my age had disguised the fact that I am well into my 60th year, the first year of a new decade.   The realization hit me not with sadness and dread, but with the hope of impending wisdom, if I play my cards right.

5.

Ross Douthat in a recent New York Times op-ed piece has totally nailed what makes Obama tick, in my humble opinion.  As a hard-core moderate, I am thrilled to read an insight like this:

“Both right and left have had trouble processing Obama’s institutionalism. Conservatives have exaggerated his liberal instincts into radicalism, ignoring the fact that a president who takes advice from Lawrence Summers and Robert Gates probably isn’t a closet Marxist-Leninist. The left has been frustrated, again and again, by the gulf between Obama’s professed principles and the compromises that he’s willing to accept, and some liberals have become convinced that he isn’t one of them at all.”

I have to say that this is the Obama I thought I was working for since early in the primaries. At this point in his presidency, it takes a lot of hope and faith to expect him to leave a legacy of peace and prosperity in these impossible times.  But when it comes to Barack Obama, I have become used to long odds paying off handsomely.  My wife and I first saw him in person during the 2004 election campaign, shortly after his keynote speech to the Democratic Convention on July 27, 2004.   With a huge lead in his own Illinois U.S. Senate race, Obama had come to Denver to support Ken Salazar’s much tougher Senate bid.  He looked tall, thin and slight as he entered the small gymnasium.  But as soon as he began to speak, I could imagine him as president.  It’s with a similar awareness of long odds that I now can imagine him as a truly successful president.  Time will tell.

6.

It’s not always easy to find a fact on the Internet.  I spent two hours trying to learn the date of Obama’s 2004 appearance in Denver.  The only trace I found was a blog entry stating that Colorado State Treasurer Cary Kennedy has a photo on her wall of Obama at a 2004 rally with Salazar and some congressional candidates.”  I’ve emailed her in hopes there is a date on the back of the photo.

7.

“It’s Complicated” with Meryl Streep, Steve Martin, and Alec Baldwin was much more satisfying a movie than I had expected.  My wife and her sister and I saw it last night in Harvard Square.  We also enjoyed a very different movie, “The Young Victoria” the night before at the Kendall Square Theatre.  On the way out, I rang Cha Cha up on my iPhone to ask what relation the current queen is to Victoria, and by the time we’d reached the car I had a text message informing me that Queen Victoria was Queen Elizabeth II’s great-great-grandmother.

8.

My sister totally surprised me with a Christmas gadget gift that I had not even known enough to lust for.  It’s a tiny Veho Micro DV camcorder that I strapped to my head for some of the big family dinner here on Christmas day.  I can’t wait to try it while rowing on the Charles next spring.  You can also clip it to a shirt pocket.  The resulting videos are headache-inducing because the view jumps around so much.  But it’s definitely a cool addition to my tech arsenal.

9.

It’s been fantastic to spend most of the past six months here in Cambridge.  Next week we return to Denver till the spring.  No matter where the suitcase lands, it’s nice to hang out “here.”

]]> http://www.lenedgerly.com/2009/12/27/odds-and-ends-toward-the-end-of-a-year/feed/ 1 http://www.lenedgerly.com/2009/12/12/stuff/ http://www.lenedgerly.com/2009/12/12/stuff/#comments Sat, 12 Dec 2009 17:02:06 +0000 Len http://www.lenedgerly.com/?p=1670

The stuff on my desk is beyond organizing. I have not cleared my email inbox for weeks. I have not done a Weekly Review for months – sorry David Allen. I am a lapsed Getting Things Done-er, and it kind of scares me.  I lurch from deadline to deadline, mainly for my weekly Kindle Chronicles podcast, put to bed yesterday afternoon.  I’m enjoying the Day After Deadline Reprieve when a long week stretches out before me, full of opportunities to “get organized.”  Instead, today I took a photo of the pile of stuff and TwitPic-ed it to Twitter.  Next I will blog about it.  It’s all I can think to do at this point.  The pile is too overwhelming.  It does look pretty, though, with sunlight cast upon it from the tall windows.  The Yorkie Claire just hopped up on my leather chair, looking for food I might have dropped.  I’m listening to Norah Jones-like songs on Pandora. I’ve got a warm dose of Starbucks Christmas Blend in my mug, next to a bowl of little carrots.  The carrots have a suspicious white covering, because they’ve been in the refrigerator for weeks, ready for that day when I decide to replace cookies and potato chips with healthy snacks.  Today might be that day.

But what about the pile of Stuff?  How about if I reach over there and pull out a plum, a representative sample?  And it’s….

A pie chart of proposed investments optimistically labeled “Growth with Moderate Income.” That would be nice!  It all looks so orderly. The pie has geometrically perfect wedges for fixed income, alternatives, emerging markets, international equities, US equities, and cash.  I need to file it somewhere.  The David Allen method is coming back to me, like a religion that I once believed in. I bought the labeler for neatly printed file folder labels. I know the drill.  But should I file this pretty pie here or in Denver?   I have no idea.  I eat a carrot.  I told my financial wizard that it looks fine, so he will implement the strategy.  He will send me emails, and we’ll have an in-person meeting in a few months to see how the “growth” part of the strategy is doing.  So I’m done with this piece of paper.  Into the wastebasket it goes.  Next!

I look the other way and reach for the pile, as if I’m drawing a winning lottery number. It feels like, yes it is…

…a piece of mail, and it hasn’t even been opened yet! I slice the top with a wooden opener that my sister gave me for Christmas or a birthday.  The smooth wood feels good, and all of a sudden I am channeling Nicholson Baker, observing my life at a granular level where everything, if you catch it right, which he always seems to do–it all seems literary and amazing.  Take this zen-like swoop of wood that someone carved and sanded and stained with care and attention, with letter opening in mind. I’ve never really noticed it before.  What a nice gift.  It does the job, delivering to my view information from my bank about my finances, a “snapshot” with tables and bar graphs – no pies and no color.  I can find all this information online, so it nicely follows the pie chart into the trash.

But what would David Allen do with this vague prompting that I feel to tell the bank they can quit sending me paper reports?  I’m not ready for that, actually.  It feels more responsible to deal with paper on a regular basis, scanning the reports with a knowing eye, the way I remember my father poring over green budget paper at his desk after work.  I always assumed he could see into those numbers all the way to the next market turn, up or down.  So I want to keep getting paper; it connects me with Dad, whose desk in his office in Harvard Square always has lots of piles on it.  He loves plowing through them, throwing things away, getting his desk clean once in a while.  At 82, he always seems happy when he’s working at his desk, leaning toward his big Mac screen, his hand on a mouse and his mind looking into numbers to see things before they happen.  Next!

Here’s a good one, a book by Jay Berkowitz that he emailed me, because I was the first one to send him a Direct Message on Twitter in response to a question.  I met Jay at a Podcamp Boston and loved his enthusiasm and kindness as he presented a session about podcasting.  This book is The Ten Golden Rules of Online Marketing Workbook: Turn Your Website into a Profit Center. I started reading it this morning, which makes it the first paper book I’ve read in months.  I even found an orange highlighter and enjoyed the tactile pleasure of marking the paper with it, something I guess I miss from my Kindle reading.  Highlighting on the Kindle is cool, too, and there’s the advantage that I can go to kindle.amazon.com and see all the passages of books I’ve highlighted.  I don’t ever really do that, but I could.  I’d like to read Jay’s book and use it to strategize what might be ahead for the Kindle Chronicles.  It’s enough of a challenge to maintain my rock-solid commitment to posting the podcast every single Friday.  To consider changing its focus, or how to keep up with the wonderful flow of comments I receive from listeners–those are tasks which I sometimes ponder for a couple of days after the last episode is safely posted on the Internet, when the week feels long and unhurried.  But by Tuesday it’s time to plan the next interview, to paw through my Google Reader feed for news stories, to figure out the Tech Tip.  I’ll put Jay’s book on the round extension from my leather chair (Claire’s left, having found nothing to eat there), which means it will be handy to reach for in the coming days.  … I just tweeted Jay to thank him.  He actually sent me two copies of the book, so if you’d like one, let me know somehow.  It’s even got a free CD featuring past episodes of his good podcast.  Next!

I touch rough fabric, and find my “Life is Good” bag beneath a layer of paper.  I love this bag. It’s where I carry my Kindle, or nook, or MacBook Air when I’m out and about.  This morning it contains my Olympus LS-10 recorder, which I realize contains the last recording I did of my father in our “Decades” project.  We sit down once a week with the Olympus, and he speaks into my Edirol CS-15 microphone, referring to careful notes he’s prepared with help from his journals.  Each session covers 10 years.  We began with zero to 10, and the one I have not yet transferred to GarageBand covers 60 to 70.  He talks without interruption for about 20 minutes, and then we take a short break before I take the mic for another 20-minute recording of questions about things he’s mentioned.  It’s one of the most satisfying projects I’ve been doing during this long stay in Cambridge, and Dad seems to be enjoying it, too.  The result will be available only for family.  I love the idea of my three-year-old grandson someday being able to listen to “Decades” as a young man, perhaps in the middle of his career, wondering where to turn.  These recordings will give him the opportunity to learn what his great-grandfather did at a similar time in his life, and he’ll hear the resonant, strong voice of that man, preserved for many decades to come.   Action: Connect the Olympus to the MacBook Pro with a black USB cable (remembering Nicholson Baker’s engaging rant about how come they designed that damn USB connection so you only have a 50-50 chance of ever having it right-side-up when you press it into the port).  I move the two audio files to the laptop, with a copy up in my MobileMe cloud, where I assume they will be safe as a backup. Next?

Well, I think I’ll end the game here.  I have figured out a way to make some progress on my Stuff while scratching the itch to post to my blog.  Nice.  Darlene is getting ready for our planned Boston outing, to see a craft fair somewhere, and maybe catch George Clooney’s latest hit, “Up in the Air.” All of this grand Stuff will be waiting for me when I return.  It’s the stuff of my life, is all.  No need to let it torture and torment me.  Thank goodness I’m not done with it yet….    Next?

]]> http://www.lenedgerly.com/2009/12/12/stuff/feed/ 1 http://www.lenedgerly.com/2009/10/25/aboard-the-henry-longfellow/ http://www.lenedgerly.com/2009/10/25/aboard-the-henry-longfellow/#comments Mon, 26 Oct 2009 02:41:14 +0000 Len http://www.lenedgerly.com/?p=1570

The Head of the Charles Regatta seemed like ages ago this afternoon as we took a leisurely boat ride upstream from the Galleria Mall aboard the Henry Longfellow.  It’s the type of tourist thing a local would seldom enjoy, so I’m grateful to our Wyoming guest, Tom Atkinson, who found the Charles Riverboat Co. on the web and suggested we go.  What fun!  The Longfellow is a handsome wooden boat, 20 years old, and it just barely fits beneath the low bridges of the Charles.

The river was quiet and uneventful, of course, compared with the frenzy of activity a week ago when 7,000 rowers were competing during weather that offered everything except hail and lightning.  Snow? You bet – click here for my video shot from the River Street Bridge. High winds? Of course.  Still, the regatta went on with the full course, despite talk Sunday of shortening it to avoid singles getting swamped in The Basin as they lined up to start.

I’ve had a chance to return to the river in a Cambridge Boat Club single since the regatta, during some sparkling fall days.  Tom’s wife, Tish, took a photo of me near the Hawthorn umpire station, close to our house.  My rowing is still tentative, but I’m feeling more and more at home in the boat and look forward to more lessons in the spring to improve my form.  One of these years I would love to compete in the Head of the Charles myself, in one of those categories for incredibly fit old guys who laugh at snow and stop at nothing.