MDT Morning.

Hey y’all — So, as of late last night, I’ve arrived in Denver to partake of the DNC milieu as best I can. At the moment, I’m reporting in from the Big Tent, a few blocks over from the Pepsi Center, where they’re housing and attempting to satiate the new media types. (In fact, I may currently be sitting dangerously close to the fluffy couches reserved for dKos.) All in all, it seems like a pretty nice set-up, with a large amount of workspace here on the first floor, a stage up above for various scheduled talks and events over the next few days (some sort of rainbow choir was performing when I got here), and goodly amounts of free stuff already being handed out (including a swag bag of eco-friendly mugs, Skype headsets, progressive–minded books, etc. etc.)

On the down side, while we seem to be in the midst of the action media-wise, and democratic happenings seem to have taken over all of the nearby environs (Lower Downtown, or “LoDo”) — I stumbled into 2 or 3 just checking out the nearest bookstore and looking for a croissant — these Big Tent passes don’t appear to be transferable to the actual convention floor. (I may look for alternate methods of getting down there, if I manage to run into any of my old DC friends, acquaintances, and/or employers.) Also, I left my camera wire back at my Denver base (a high school friend’s home in Wash Park), so any pictures will have to wait. Finally, PC battery time is at a premium, so –even with my extra laptop batteries on hand — updates around here look to be relatively scarce during the day. Still, it looks like it’s shaping up to be an interesting week.

That’s Me in the Corner…

(That’s Obama, our next president, in the spotlight.) So, as a convenient appetizer to next’s week convention in Denver, Sen. Barack Obama swung by nearby Oscar Smith High School — my little sister‘s alma mater, not five minutes away from my current roost here in Chesapeake — for a town hall meeting last night. And, not only did I manage to procure a ticket, but my mom and I, for whatever reason, had the requisite “look” to get gold-banded into the premium section, right behind the Senator. (For the full ninety minutes of us nodding along and clapping, the video of the event is here and below.)

As far as Sen. Obama’s talk went, it was about what you’d expect, if you’ve been keeping up with the election so far. It focused heavily on the economy and bread-and-butter issues such as health insurance and education, gave the GOP a lot of guff for their usual idiocies and fear-mongering antics, and was also considerably more earthy and populist than much of his primary rhetoric. (But that’s the general for you, and particularly when you’re facing a candidate amazingly unable to count up his number of McMansions.) In any case, at the end of the proceedings, I was close enough to shake the Senator’s hand on the rope line, and got to tell him “I’m looking forward to January.” And, hey, aren’t we all?

So, however my flitting around the convention hall turns out next week, I’m happy to say I got in a choice Obama sighting before even getting on the plane to Denver. (And now I feel much less bad about missing out on tix for the nomination speech next Thursday.)

Dog Days of Summer.

As eagle-eyed sidebar readers and social networking friends may have already noticed, I’ve gone ahead and thrown up a few pictures of Berk and I enjoying the summer nearby. The sheltie in question was never a frisbee dog back in the city, but, y’know, I think he’s starting to get the hang of it.

A Categorical Imperative.

FYI: As you may or may not have noticed, the list of categories to the right has been growing considerably over the past few days. This is because, [a] to take advantage of the usual summer lull, [b] in true bored historian form, I’m indulging my penchant for archiving, [c] since 90-95% of GitM‘s hits are Google searches anyway, and [d] since I didn’t really think through how long it was going to take when I started, I’ve decided to go back through the archives and tag up the old posts with more detailed categories.

After several hours of work, I’m only to December 2007, so this should take a few weeks to complete, on and off. (And the Geocities era (1999-2002) will remain untouched for now.) But, hopefully, the backlog of posts will be more useful in the future.

Outside, it’s America.

Hello all. After a long week of moving, cleaning, filling up a nearby storage unit, and unpacking the mobile dissertation office, Berk and I are back on the grid: He’s acclimatizing (again) to my parents’ house, and I’m acclimatizing (again) to the strange and seemingly unsustainable environment that is late-stage car culture. In order to procure a bag of dog food, we drove along the highway for two exits, pulled into one of an endless sea of strip-malls with parking lots the size of Morningside Park, and entered a super-air-conditioned palace, brimming over with a cornucopia of All Things Pet-Related. Now, I understand this is highly normal, but it seemed really bizarre at the time. Hey, it’s been awhile.

At any rate, the move out of New York is complete. And, notwithstanding a few more occasional moments of in-transition disorientation, I expect my southern roots will soon reassert themselves (particularly after several more visits to Chick-Fil-A, Cracker Barrel, and the like.)

Leaving New York, Never Easy.

New York, New York, the center of the world, the city that never sleeps. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. And if you can’t…well, then, I guess you pack up a U-Haul and move on down the road. (Or is it “Then we take Berlin“?) At any rate, after a seven-year stint here in the Harlem-Morningside environs, Berk and I are leaving Manhattan on Wednesday for (hopefully) greener pastures. My next real destination is still undetermined, pending the vagaries of the job search, but for now I’ll be returning to the nest to continue writing the dissertation and otherwise scrounge for remunerative employ. We’ll see how it goes from there.

As for NYC, on one hand, I’m really going to miss this town. The sheer energy of Gotham always puts a spring in my step, and I really enjoy that distinct New York sensation of living in the center of the hive, ever-so-slightly in the future. On the other hand, I’d be lying if I didn’t concede that this city tends to aggravate my natural Irish melancholy, particularly once you factor in the usual grad school isolation, the happenstance that many of my better friends left some time ago, and the sad fact that, romantically speaking, I got crushed here…twice. But, no hard feelings, New York. Sure, there are lingering ghosts in this city, and if I never live as alone again as I have the past two years, it’ll be soon enough. But, I still love Manhattan, and I always will, and I would definitely look forward to doing another stint here at some point, if it turns out to be in the cards.

In any case, the future — however hazy at the moment — beckons. So, I’d expect it to be quiet here over the next few days as my brother and I lug my accumulated belongings down the Eastern Seaboard. Until then, hope everyone had a relaxing and appropriately reflective Memorial Day, and I’ll be in touch on the other end. And, if you’re an NYC reader and I didn’t see ya before I left, I expect I’ll be back for visits, more often than not. (I mean, this is New York.) Until then, be safe, y’all.

Secrets of the HVL.

“If your catch needs work, both Ms. Guerette and Mr. Butt suggested practicing putting your blades in and out of the water while sitting in the catch position at full compression (legs bent, chest nearly touching thighs, arms extended). Ms. Guerette recommended doing this drill in shallow water, since there’s a chance you could fall into the drink.” By way of several ex-rower friends: In the NYT, Charley Butt (my former HVL coach) and one of his current proteges, Olympian Michelle Guerette, offer pointers on how to improve your stroke, and sum up how I spent a good bit of time in college. (See also the accompanying slideshow and video.)

Resting on (and Resetting) Past Laurels.

So, I noticed last night that my old GitM coxing columns at Rowersworld, written a decade ago, had at some point disappeared into the midnight realm of the 404, and that my writings page was thus featuring tons of dead links. But, with the aid of the trusty Wayback Machine, I was able to recreate them again here, where they can reside until this entire site falls into its inevitable disrepair. I’m not sure very many of my regular readers are of the rowing persuasion (anymore). Still, in case y’all are interested, the articles are back up.

Also, while searching for the lost articles, I found this essay on how to throw your coxswain correctly, which references the pic above. Just to clarify, I have “a blissful smile” on my face mostly because we won, yes, but also because I’m fully aware it’s early May in Massachusetts, and the waters of Lake Quinsigamond won’t immediately close down my bodily systems. Getting tossed at Dartmouth in early April is considerably less blissful.

The Century that Was.

Another personal plug: As part of the online rollout for a new edition of Walter LaFeber’s The American Century, I recently composed four brief classroom essays on various 20th century events, as evaluated from a 21st century (re: ruthlessly presentist) perspective. In case anyone’s interested, they’ve now gone live: The Versailles Conference | The Military Industrial Complex Speech | The Tet Offensive | A Second American Century? Now, that’s edutainment.

Stranger things will come your way.

So I guess I’m probably way behind on this one, but anyway: My sis informed me at dinner last night that not only has Portishead been working on their third album (and first in ten years), but it’s in the can, it’s called Third, and it officially comes out in only two weeks. The video for the dub number “Machine Gun” (the first single), is just below. Even notwithstanding the “Blue Monday“-ish rat-a-tat that drives the track, I’m loving that subterranean bass lurking under the surface. (Hearing it reminded me of the beginning of this Chemical Brothers video, which I always found more nightmarish than I think they meant it to be.) And then it gets all Kraftwerky right around 2:40, which is a direction that generally sits well with me.

I know Dummy was everybody and their brother’s favorite trip-hop album back in the day, and it kinda lost some cool cachet just by becoming so gimongously popular. (Normally, I wouldn’t hold that against an album, but, Dummy was kinda everywhere there for awhile. Sorta like Air or The Crystal Method a few years later.) Still, along with R.E.M.’s Monster, the Tribe’s Beat, Rhymes, Life, Ill Communication, the now-insufferable, then-inescapable Pulp Fiction soundtrack, and a few others, Dummy was the score of my college years. Both melancholy and beat-intensive, it worked in the background for almost any occasion, and a lot of my fonder memories from school days are keyed to that Bristol sound.