I’m off to Cornell for the day! This bus goes directly there from midtown.
Sometimes leaving early is bad and obviously you don’t want to be late for something, however hitting the sweet spot during massive delays is pretty good. This should be cleared out by the time I leave.
I missed the train I planned for because, well, uber, traffic and all that comes with living so far out. I was a little sad but now it seems that it is going to work out much better.
I am frustrated that I cannot buy a cup of coffee at the Costco Food Court when I'm shopping there. Why not?
I wrote a letter to my local store's management about this terrible issue. They haven't responded, so I thought I might share it here and see if someone reads it who might have some power to do something about it.
I did find this picture on Reddit, which makes me wonder why this machine isn't everywhere.
I do hope I get a response soon! I sent this maybe a day after the date posted in the letter.
Had a great time meeting up with some former students of mine for dinner in Manhattan. This is my newest hobby, going to Manhattan and staying over in an inexpensive hotel room.
We had a great time at dinner, one of my favorite places to go called Da Umberto. Check it out if you are ever close enough to go!
Here we are, probably on bottle 2 of a very nice wine:
Here are some of the random shots I took. I don't like my iPhone camera; it looks pretty bad compared to my pixel phone I used to have. So I carry around my old point and click Nikon camera and take pictures of whatever I think is interesting. Mostly it's lightposts and other places people put stickers. I also take a lot of building pictures.
https://www.last.fm/user/Professor_Steve/listening-report/year/2025/month/1
I think we are off to a great start with listening to music this year!
I am a huge fan of hotel breakfast buffet. Today I had one in manhattan after a great night catching up with some former students over dinner. Maybe drank a little too much because I’m dehydrated this morning.
Book shopping is next before heading back out east. Meanwhile, just look at those eggs.
COMM email (whatever the NCA listserv is called) is really boring, there's no more fighting. But this was posted today unironically and I had a great laugh.
what an amazing project idea!!
It is incredible how a smell or a taste can really bring you back. This was the beer that my good friend, the Poet David and I drank when we could in college. It seemed like it was reserved for special times. Maybe not too special, but it wasn’t cheap so we didn’t have it all the time.
I saw it at Stop and Shop last week when I dropped in to pick up some necessities and here it was - an unplanned necessity. I think it was maybe $9 for six of them; now it’s closer to $14.
After having a couple at the computer I was brought back to times in undergraduate where we talked about great books, great reading, and the art of writing. Ironically, these were all things that I imagined I would be able to do more and more freely as a professor.
It was a nice nostalgic moment for me to go back to when reading and writing had little institutional purpose and felt a lot closer and meaningful and part of the world. I think that writing and reading were more open-ended at that time in my life and free of institutional purpose.
There was institutional writing to be sure, many assignments called for it, but it wasn’t the entirety of reading and writing. It was just a slight amount. It really had little to no relationship with the reading and writing I was doing outside of the institution.
But the institution made it possible to do this reading and writing. Visiting the physical library was much more vital in those days but the institutional access to the library is still incredibly vital.
Where did that relationship to writing and reading go? Have I let my institutional association take even that from me through my frustration and disappointment with them?
Or should I have these beers more often?
Spent a lot of today cleaning up after the winter storm last night.
I am reminded that Buddhist thought considers this kind of work - cleaning up - as a valuable privilege.
It’s a good opportunity not to just lose yourself in the work or whatever might be the standard Zen idea of it, but it allows the mind to race through thoughts, feelings, and ideas without dwelling on any too long or too little. They simply come and go.
This is how it works for me anyway, not sure if I am doing it right. It might be something antithetical to the practice to think of a right or wrong way. To hover over this conception is perhaps the most antithetical.
But wondering about the borders and boundaries isn’t bad it’s hanging on to them. So I’m grateful to spend a few hours removing the snow which over time would have removed itself. It’s too funny.
Hey everyone, just a rambling general update today.
https://www.last.fm/user/Professor_Steve/listening-report/year/2025/week/2
Seems that the second week of the year saw me falling off in my listening habits, but still pretty good. I'm recovering from a cold this week so not a lot going on.
I am thinking of recycling a lot of my YouTube videos for class this semester as I do have a lot of good ones about debate and argumentation. Is it ethical to make students watch YouTube? There are advertisements there. Is it ethical to make students watch ads for a course they are paying thousands of dollars to attend?
I would think at best we'd have a good video platform at the university level like Vimeo or something that all students could use. I guess we have Panopto, but most students use the Canvas Studio or they just upload the file to Canvas.
Maybe I'm over thinking it.