That Time of Year

The Canada geese are leaving.* Apple-harvesting festivals are starting. Gardens are bringing forth their bounty. The local grocery store is offering huge pumpkins, along with mountains of candy. The maple leaves are beginning to turn. Last night I turned on the furnace.

* Some Canada geese now overwinter. Just another reason I hate those things.

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Zug Zug

Some have wondered why I'm not going home to help my mother out this weekend. Well, next week I have the following:

• Monday: 7 page paper on al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi aka Joannes Leo Africanus de Medicis aka Yuhanna al-Asad, an interesting figure in the early sixteenth century Mediterranean world.
• Tuesday: 30 minute public presentation on my current research.
• Wednesday: 20 page paper and 15 minute presentation on Wiemar Germany.
  
• Thursday: dental exam with bonus x-rays.
  

I'm pretty sure that the dental appointment will be the high point of the week. So, I don't really have the time to go help my mother clean and gut her house. But I'll be going down to help out the following weekend.

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I'm Trying Not To Use My Marine Vocabulary To Express How I Feel About This

My mother's house is currently underwater, suffering the third "100 year flood" in the last six years. This is the biggest yet, a "500 year flood", with the highest water on record. My quick calculation suggests that three such floods in that time frame, assuming floods are normally distributed, is about a four-sigma event. Which should be quite unusual. I suspect that the model used to predict floods of the Susquehanna River is not a very good one.

The last flood crested at 35.9 feet, and did substantial damage to the first floor of my mother's house. The current flood is projected to crest at 39.8 feet. My mother did receive a several hours of warning, courtesy of an automatic call from the town, which she spent in moving stuff from the basement and first floor to the second floor, and also getting things out of the garage to the extent possible. In the true spirit of community, two neighbors came over to help. I considered driving down to assist, but by the time I'd heard of the flood, if I drove straight there I'd have to swim the last part of the way. I have a good car, but it's no Humvee.

When she had moved all she could and the water was close, my mother evacuated and spent the night with her eldest daughter's in-laws. Today she was planning on continuing on to stay with her daughter. I hope to come down and help with the cleanup once the water recedes. I expect that my professors will be understanding.

If anyone wants to see the output of the river gauge in her town, here are two good sites: the US Geological Survey's and the National Weather Service's. They present the data in different ways. The first one also has a flow graph, which (as of 1600 on 08 Sep 2011) indicates the current instantaneous flow rate is 144,000 cfs. As a point of comparison, the flow rate on this date in 2010 was 1450 cfs. That hundredfold jump is not good.

The news is reporting various bridges out, but I'm moderatly confident that the main bridge from Owego to I-86 will be intact, as it's quite high. Of course, it's piers could be undermined. And there's a neat little historical marker on end of the bridge that mentions the previous bridges on that location that had been swept away.

So, I will summarize. There's a bad flood right now at my mother's place. My mother is safe. Her house is likely be inundated much higher than last time. And it was only this summer that the damage from the last flood was finally repaired. I'm just hoping that the water stays below the level of the second floor, where she had moved as much of her chattel property as she could.

Not-so-pretty pictures:




UPDATE: The river gauge stopped reporting at 0800 on 08 Sep 2011, because the gauge has a design maximum of 38 feet. That's how bad a flood this is.

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They Call Them "Massholes"

Trying to get a graduate degree in history requires doing some research. My primary subject is Early Modern Europe, i.e. Europe from about 1450-1812 or so. (Those dates are approximate, as arguing about periodization is what academic historians do when we've got nothing more important to argue about.)

Despite its being outside my primary interest, I've started a Master's project on the national origins of nineteenth century whalers. It's sort of building off the term paper from one of my "core" classes. To summarize that paper, most histories of whaling are very nation-based: American whaling, Norwegian whaling, Argentine whaling, etc. But whaling crews were a trans-national bunch.

New Bedford, Massachusetts was the home of the American whaling industry for most of the industry's existence. This was a good example of economic specialization– there were many larger ports, but the concentration of whalers in New Bedford meant that was where whaling hardware makers sold their goods, where the deepest market for whale oil was, and where experienced whalers could be found between voyages. Whaling was a lucrative trade, too– the local newspaper calculated that in 1840, New Bedford had the highest per-capita income in the United States.  Those days are long gone. Today, New Bedford is half fishing town, half tourist town. The fishing half harvests scallops, and according to the town's Chamber of Commerce, it has the highest cash-value fishing harvest of any American port. The tourist half services people like me, who want to see the historic district.

At any rate, New Bedford is where the New Bedford Whaling Museum is located. Attached to the museum is a large archive of whaling-related texts. It is to that archive that I wanted to go, in search of data.

I packed up on Saturday, bought an E-ZPass on Sunday, and left on Monday, only an hour after I had intended to get on the road. But I know myself well enough to add an hour of slack into my schedule.

I had my bike rack on the back of my car, with my good Jamis commuter bike attached. I had reservations for a hotel about six miles away from the archive, but the directions from hotel to archive seemed simple enough to bike: just follow State Street most of the way. Cycling would provide me with valuable exercise and allow me to avoid paying the parking fees of the downtown lots.

The weatherman on the radio said it would be overcast and cool all day, getting windy in the evening. Unfortunately, the weatherman was making a projection for the weather around Buffalo. About when I rolled past Syracuse, the heavens opened up with a series of ferocious thunderstorms. I nevertheless made it to my friend Paul's house, south of Albany, almost on time. After a "hello" to his mother, Paul and I hopped in his Prius for a jaunt over to his regular Monday evening game.

I'd played with these people in the past, albeit briefly. My presence was enough to largely derail the planned game, as it turned into a party/BS session. It was a good time. The hosts were scheduled to move out of their apartment the following weekend, but I didn't see evidence of a lot of packing. I figured that wasn't my problem, though.

After the game wrapped up, we headed back to Paul's place, and we stayed up later than perhaps was wise, chatting. Good times!

Morning came, and I left with the sun. Well, to be honest, the sun got a substantial head start on me. But at least it wasn't all that high in the sky yet. Back onto the interstate, and soon across the Massachusetts border.

The drive to New Bedford was mostly uninteresting, although I went through the heart of Providence, Rhode Island. That got slightly exciting because there's an Interstate highway realignment project going on, so both my GPS and my paper map were inaccurate. After some weaving between lanes, doubtless reinforcing the predjudices of those that saw my New York license plates, I manage to stay on-track. Part of the route was along a road that clearly sees lots of traffic on good weekends for people heading to Cape Cod. Driving along on a Tuesday morning, the hordes of gas stations and cheap motels looked somehow lonely.

Once I reached New Bedford, I checked in at my hotel, dropped off my bags, and headed for the archive, which opens at noon. The original plan was to ride my bike, see above. But the first day, time was wearing on, and I wanted to scout the route first. So off I drove.

Getting around downtown New Bedford is a nightmare. It's a warren of tiny streets, along a steep hillside, laid out in such a way as to make me believe they were intended for pedestrians only, not even horse-drawn wagons. The streets are mostly one-way, and not in a sensible alternating pattern. Streets also all change names right in the center of town, as a result of a political hissy-fight held two hundred years ago.

I finally found a parking garage, and even that took longer than expected, as the middle two floors of it were reserved for a couple of downtown businesses. Once parked, I had to ask for directions to the archive, as the helpful little tourist map I picked up at the garage's lobby was utterly useless.

I'd been warned what to expect at the archive itself. They don't want people wandering in, looking for a user-friendly museum. Most of the people that show up fall into two categories: scholars at Massachusetts universities, well-known to the staff; and retired folks looking for genealogy information, as New Bedford was Massachusetts's second-largest port of entry for immigrants in the 19th century.

So I rang the doorbell, which is disguised to keep out the riff-raff. I'm not kidding about that. After a few moments, the door was opened by a rather elderly volunteer, and I had to spend some effort convincing her that I was (a) expected, and (b) a serious researcher.

Past the gatekeeper, I put my backpack and cell phone into a locker, divested myself of every writing implement save a pencil, signed a contract specifying what I was and wasn't allowed to do, signed a logbook that will get filed somewhere and perhaps be used by researchers in the 22nd century, and was ushered into the sanctum itself.

The archive building was built as a bank, with a thirty-foot ceiling, huge windows (filmed to protect documents), and an open plan. Three-quarters of the space was the stacks and off-limits to folks like me. Somewhere in the back there are the original four vaults, still in use for the most prized documents. In the front, there were four large nicely-lit tables for visitors to work at. The archivist I'd been corresponding with came out to welcome me, assuaging the worries of the elderly volunteer who had opened the door and was still hovering, apparently worried that I was going to do something irrationally youthful at any moment.

The first day I started off with some microfilm records. Which was all good, except the last time I used a microfilm reader was 1994, in high school. It's easy to see where the film reel goes on the spindles, but the subtleties of the control scheme took me a little while to recollect and/or discover. I spent a couple of hours, sitting in an uncomfortable chair, squinting at a screen that really needed a shade from the sunlight shining on it, trying to read a charity's logbooks, written in a crabbed hand by someone that has undoubtedly been dead for a century. It was fun!

All to soon, though, the archive was closing. I'm not exaggerating about it being soon, because the archive's hours were Tuesday through Friday, noon to four PM. Budgets are tight, these days.

I found my way back to the parking garage, and was ruefully preparing to pay their exorbitant rate, when the attendant noticed my university parking hangtag. He asked to see my student ID, then charged me a single dollar. Woo hoo! I later found out that the student rate is only for students at the nearby community college and UMass Dartmouth campus. So the attendant was doing me an even bigger favor than I'd thought.

Despite dragging my bike across three states, I decided not to ride to the archive the next day. The hotel was on "State Street" which sounded nice and looked OK when I had scouted it from home via Google Maps. But "State Street" was also US-6, with traffic ripping past at 55 mph and zero shoulder. It was bikable in a certain sense, but only at substantial risk. There weren't any parallel streets I could use, either, as this is the part of New England carved out of ancient mountains, where there's no good reason to live except to avoid religious prosecution by setting up one's own system of religious prosecution.

Wednesday was more slogging in the microfilm mines. I was getting a bit dispirited, and mentioned to the archivist that I didn't think I was going to have enough time to take sufficient data down in longhand from the film. She said "You know, I think there's someone that's doing a book with the info in those. A while ago she had a big project to transcribe it all into a database. It's still embargoed, of course, but I could see if she might be willing to help you." So she sent an email off. I was torn between the hope that I was going to be saved endless hours of soul-destroying data entry, and the despair that perhaps my project had already been scooped.

Thursday I gave up on the microfilm and moved on to some original documents, these ones from Sag Harbor, NY. Late in the afternoon, the author that had supervised the transcription of all those pages I'd been looking at showed up. She was emeritus and possessed of that particular crusty personality found in those women who have survived New England for many decades. She started off by interrogating me about my project, then spent twenty minutes haranguing me about the readings I hadn't yet done, and then gave me her data upon the promise that I'd give her credit, and also not have it published before the data embargo ran out. Which, as it turns out, was the end of September. Not much of an inconvenience there.

Friday was the last day of research. I was thinking I'd dig in the records of Hawaiian crew, partially because I'm a masochist. Most of the Hawaiian sailors signed on as "John Kanaka", "George Kanaka," et cetera. "Kanaka", in a variety of different Polynesian languages, just means "man" or "person". So as you can imagine, there were a lot of John Kanakas.

But my visit was cut short. Apparently some high muckety-mucks in the foundation had decided they were going to hold some important meeting at the archive that day, because the main museum's meeting room was already booked. With fulsome apologies, the archivist threw me out. Perhaps it was for the best, as I spent the rest of the day touring the museum, seeing the Seaman's Bethel, visiting bookstores, etcetera. As I'd checked out from the hotel, my bike was on my car, and I cycled a bit around town. The biking was terrible: the streets were hilly and frequently one-way, as I've mentioned. But also, in the 1960s the city ripped out all it's nice pavement in the downtown historic district, and installed granite setts, which are stone pavers with big gaps between them. I probably did all sorts of damage to my wheels by bouncing my road tires over those nasty rocks. Growing tired of the annoying wheels, and having seen the museums,  I made an early start for home.

The plan had been for me to stop by Paul's place and spend the night again. But with an early departure from New Bedford, I converted that to a one-hour rest break and pushed on. I made it back to Buffalo just before midnight, three days before the first day of classes.

Total distance added to my car's odometer: 1386.5 miles. Also, those crummy setts broke the brake hold-down clamps on my car's rear end, which necessitated a visit to a mechanic after I decided to stop ignoring the nasty noises. The good news is that the bike didn't seem to reduce my fuel economy much, so I don't feel as bad about schlepping it around for only a two hours of riding.

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Begin As You Mean to Go On

I intend to continue commuting to class exclusively by bicycle. It's good for my health, and it's faster than driving anyway, as finding parking on campus is a nightmare.

The first day of the semester, there were sunny skies but a dark cloud on the horizon as I set out for my first class. So I tossed a windbreaker into my bag, just in case it got cool.

That dark cloud arrived much more rapidly than I was expecting. While half-way to campus, a sudden torrential downpour broke out. When I staggered into the history grad student's lounge, I was shaking with cold, and soaked to the bone. My torso, protected by the windbreaker, was only damp. My legs and feet were so soaked, my shoes squelched with every step.

It seems Mother Nature has thrown down the gauntlet, eh?

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Should Have Thought of this Years Ago

We all know that it's a bad idea to go to the grocery store while hungry. I've discovered the solution, though– with enough sleep deprivation, I get very task-focused as my executive function gets out of whack. I become incapable of purchasing anything not already written on my list.

On the downside, if the list is insufficiently specific, problems ensue. I had "breakfast cereal" written on there, and I spent a good five minutes in the cereal aisle, unable to decide which cereal I should purchase.

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Tragedies Are Distressing

A good friend of mine died last night. I revised my post about it three times now, and for the moment I'm just going to leave the post in draft mode. Partly it's just that the circumstances are unclear. All I know is that she took benadryl, and now she's dead. Our social group is processing conflicting information about the exact details: was it suicide? An allergic reaction to, ironically enough, an antihistamine? Was it an unintentional OD, perhaps with a little alcohol for a lethal cocktail? I imagine I'll learn the facts sooner or later. But long and short of it is, a woman I've known for more than a decade is dead, tragically.

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Pack Your Trash

I've been in the same apartment since I returned to the University at Buffalo, two and a half years ago. (*gulp!*) It's in an apartment complex owned by the school, and it was the first of the student apartments built, way back in 1992-93. It's not a big complex, because there were unsure what the student demand would be. Suffice it to say that the school now has three more apartment complexes, all much bigger than this one.

The university in its capacity of landlord has decided to improve the fire alarm systems in this complex. The planned upgrades will require adding quite a bit of new wiring through the walls and ceilings. It'd be tough to work around the residents, so they are getting us out of the way.

There are about fifteen or so buildings in the complex, and each one is being emptied in turn, the residents having to move out for two weeks for the alarm system upgrades. We're being moved into an extra-fully-furnished building, with not just furniture but also complete kitchenware. So all we had to do was pack up our clothing, bedding, and toiletries, and hump across the parking lot. All the furniture left behind had to be shoved in specified corners of the old apartment to make sure it was out of the way of the wiring crew.

Moving day was Saturday July 23rd, and you may recall it was hot as hell and sticky humid. Fun fun! Also, of course, two weeks is long enough that one can't just take a suitcase of clothing.

I originally planned to take just my laptop for computing purposes, but the furniture moving orders required me to unwire my desktop. That's the hard part of moving a PC, so with it broken down to components, I just brought the key pieces over and set it back up. Headphones only for sound is bringing me back to my barracks days. Having only provided institutional furniture is also a bit of a blast from the past.

One more week, and I have to not only move my stuff back to the old apartment, but drag all my furniture out of corners. It should be loads of fun. Especially the bookcases.

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Root Root Root for the Bisons!

Hil has a second, part-time job. But, the part-time job is working for the same company. It's all very confusing.

At any rate, her part-time position is to escort groups of people with mental disabilities on social outings. They go out for pizza, they go bowling, they walk along Riverside Park, whatever. The goal is to get some non-work related socialization for their clients, and also give the client's primary caretaker an evening off.

Last Thursday, the group was going to watch the local AAA franchise, the Buffalo Bisons. America's pastime, what could be better? They had a big pile of extra tickets, so Hil and her coworkers were asked to bring friends or family along. (Normally doing that is specifically disallowed, as they are supposed to be socializing with the clients, not with their off-duty friends.) So Hil and I went to see the mighty Bisons take on the Rochester Red Wings.

This hasn't been the Bison's year: they were 40-54 as of game day. It wasn't my day either. Hil had to drive her clients to the game, so I went in my own car, and I failed to account for traffic being slower while heading to a 7:05 PM game at the stadium in the heart of downtown. Not only did I miss the first half-inning, I had to call Hil to come outside the stadium and meet me to give me a ticket to get inside.

Our seats gave us a, shall we say, panoramic view of the field. We were up in the top corner of the edge of the grandstand out along the first-base line. The day was still warm, but up where we were the wind from the lake was quite brisk. That didn't stop us from making a seventh-inning visit to the ice cream vendor.

The game itself wasn't bad. The Bisons got off to a good start, up 2-0 after the first and adding three more in the fifth. They went through five pitchers, but being the minors, I expect the manager tries to keep pitch counts down. The Red Wings got in three of their own in the seventh, but they couldn't close the gap, and the Bisons won 5-3.

I didn't notice when the game ended. Seriously, I was confused when everyone stood up all off a sudden. It was late, I was cold, the damned game was just dragging on.

The last pro ball game I went to, I was 14, and according to my father I was not shy about expressing how bored I was. This time was better, but I don't think I'm going to invest in season tickets anytime soon.

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"Weird Al" Yankovic

I'm not quite sure how young I was when I first heard "Weird Al" Yankovic on the radio. His songs were in frequent rotation on Dr. Demento's radio show, which I started listening to in middle school. The show was on from 10PM to midnight on Sunday night, which was late for a school night! I'd often fall asleep before the top ten countdown.

Monday, while checking a university webpage for unrelated reasons, I discovered that Weird Al was playing my university's mainstage on Wednesday. I don't own any of his recent albums, so I mused on Facebook "Weird Al Yankovic is playing a show in Buffalo this Wednesday. Should I get back in touch with my younger self and attend?" Responses included "OMG why are you even asking?", "YESSSSS", and "Absolutely." Respondents included a selection of all four of my major Facebook lists: family, high school friends, university friends, and Marine buddies.

With the advice going overwhelmingly in favor, I shopped online for tickets. Those villains at Ticketmaster wanted about 20% of the total in fees, so I cycled over to the campus box office. Exercise plus saving money is just about a family tradition.

The show started at 7 PM. There was an opening act of Star Wars cosplayers from the 501st Imperial Stormtrooper Legion, Excelsior Battalion. (New York is the "Excelsior State", so the 501st's NY group named themselves that.) Hil couldn't get out of work as soon as she'd hoped, so we arrived just in time to find our seats. We were only waiting about five minutes before Weird Al came out.

He opened his show with one of his traditions, a polka medley of recent music hits. I came to the realization that I have no idea what the kids are listening to these days, as I simply did not recognize most of the songs he was parodying.

The rest of the show was more to my taste. It was a mix of his classics, along with new ones from an album he just released. He has to face the same problem of all long-running performers, striking a balance between old and new pieces, and I think he did a good job with that.

I had a good time, and I think Hil did too. What else can one ask of a concert?

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