At a “random public boat ramp” on Lake Huron, Gregg and Kelley say that they found this view to the east.
It was a sunny day. The sky and lake were blue. They had the place to themselves until some fishermen showed up. And then there was this.
What is it with chairs and lakes in Michigan? On a Silent Sunday not so long ago, there was THIS.
The chairs are telling us something. But what?
Years ago I dove into the programming language Ada. The NASA lab was funding me was deep into it, but they were far away, and no one here was interested. Here, it was either FORTRAN, or it was C. But I had drunk the Kool-Aide. Ada was difficult to learn in isolation but not impossible. And it enabled amazing things — things that gave me big ideas. Still, there was no one to talk to about it.
My son periodically jokes about how his mom told him years later that I would come home late at night and go on interminably about Ada. She was a captive audience, and I was desperate to share my excitement. But as I went on, her eyes would droop, and her head would begin to bob.
“Ada…,” so their joke goes. “Zzzz.”
Over the last severn years of teaching Algebra 2, I’ve assembled a year’s worth of guided notes in a format that… in a nice format.
I’d love to talk to you about my rationale for the visual appearance of the notes. And I’d love to talk to you about the LaTeX-based system I’ve built (See it here, if you dare.) There is much to say about the system, from the gorgeous math, to its ability to generate a “blank” student version of the notes and a “filled in” teacher version with answers and commentary in red.
Wait. Don’t leave yet.
The system enables the generation a full year’s worth of notes (either the student or the teacher version) as a single PDF in book form, including a hyperlinked table of contents that will take you directly to (say) Lesson 4.3.
No, wait. I haven’t finished.
The VS Code/LaTeX build automation allows a single set of LaTeX source files to generate either version without any duplication — a capability based on Unix symbolic links. The unit tests. The GitHub integration. I’d love to talk about it.
I see that I’ve lost you.
“LaTex-based algebra guided notes…,” so it goes, “Zzzz.”
Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker to his guests from Texas:
…how do I make sure that we’re standing on the right side of history? There’s a simple answer. The wrong side of history will always tell you to be afraid. The right side of history will always expect you to be courageous. Expect courage from people around you, and it will show up. Expect fear, and fear will rule the day. Let the courage of these leaders be an example to the rest of the country. I’m proud to stand side by side with our friends from Texas today. [emph. added]
So our summer vacation was at an end. We had been on the road a month, had slept three nights in a real bed, roasted in the sun, shivered in the cold, survived gray and wind and rain, managed to avoid biting fly season in the Upper Peninsula, slapped many mosquitos and tweezed a few ticks, visited friends, visited family, eaten well, slept hard.
Now it was time to leave that cottage on that hill on that lake and go home.
It was a five day trip home with one-night-stops at campgrounds in Indiana, Illinois, Arkansas, and Texas. The “camping” was of the no-nonsense arrive-eat-sleep-eat-depart variety.
At the end of day five with 30 minutes to go, Izzy suddenly knew where she was. She watched our progress intently and sniffed incessantly anticipating her home.
And so now, 1455 miles after leaving Michigan, we are at home back in Texas.
Morning and evening light on Half Mile Lake:
We left this behind a month after we’d left Austin. Tell me again, why did we do that?
Huckleberries have grown on this hill for a long time. Warmed by the sun. Tended and picked and eaten by generations.
They await the arrival of the next.
Found hanging in a cottage closet:
I made my choice. Which one would you choose?
There was one night when we were in The Porkies when it rained quite a lot. Not a deluge, mind you, but enough for us to be thankful that we were in a trailer instead of a tent.
The next morning, the storm was gone and there was a gentle breeze. I saw a couple setting up camp a few sites down from us. They had just arrived. There was a tarp and sheet hanging from a long rope strung between two trees. One of them was shaking the fly and furiously sweeping the inside of the tent. He looked up and smiled.
“Did you get wet last night?” I asked, wondering where they had arrived from.
“Yeah,” he said, “but it wasn’t too bad.”
He then explained that after three years of dating, he and his partner had taken a long weekend from where they worked (in food service in Wisconsin) and without telling anyone got married in Mackinac. He and she had told no one of their plans, had borrowed his boss’s car for the trip, and were on their way home. Later that day, I saw him writing “Just Married” on the back of the car as she drew green ivy designs on one side and wrote something in runes on the other side.
The following morning, as Trudy and I were enjoying the free hot chocolate and coffee at the camp host’s site (evidently a summer Saturday and Sunday perk at the campground), I looked over to the newlyweds’ site to say goodbye. All was quiet at their campsite. Their tent was still closed.
What a shame to miss them and not get another chance to congratulate them. Instead I got a pen and some paper and left them a note on the door of their car.
I forgot to date it. I bet they’ll remember.
My cousin’s directions were clear and quite explicit, as they usually are. I asked several follow-ups that revealed my ignorance, as I often do. He clarified, and that was that.
I plugged their yellow extension cord into an outlet on the side of the cottage and ran it halfway to their trailer. I connected their black 30-amp cord to the yellow cord, covering the connection with an upside down red bucket in case of rain. (The bucket had a note affixed to it about being Bette’s special cleaning bucket, but as it had been lying outside next to the wood pile, I figured repurposing it would be no flagrant violation of the rules. But I digress.) Finally I screwed the black cord into the outlet on the side of my cousin’s trailer.
Mission Accomplished, I thought as I went to turn on the interior lights. Click. Nothing. Click on another switch. Nothing. Click click. Nothing and nothing.
The yellow extension cord was glowing, so the power was certainly on. I looked around a bit more and flipped other switches but got no closer to the desired result. So I set off to get my brother. Certainly he would know what to do. They have a bigger trailer that probably has a similar boot-up sequence.
He came over to our cousin’s trailer and clicked the switches. Nothing. I showed him the breaker/fuse panel under the bed — nothing obvious there. We were puzzled. (I just know we both also lamented how hard it was for us to screw our bodies into that small space to see the breakers only to find that our eyes were not up to the task. But I digress.) We walked around the outside of the trailer, looking for an on/off switch. He took me over to their trailer and showed me the switch on the outside, and we walked back looking for something similar.
There on the tongue of our cousin’s trailer was a big bright silver switch with the words ON and an arrow pointing one way and OFF with an arrow pointing the other way. We rejoiced. I flipped the switch. Nothing. Then we looked down at the switch on the tongue of the trailer. It was on a completely disconnected piece of metal that wasn’t attached to the trailer at all. (I could have tossed it into the woods. Oh the shame of such cluelessness. But I digress.)
We went back inside to look around again. Nothing new. All still dark. Night time was approaching. My brother stepped outside and turned around.
“What is that?” he asked, pointing at a covered outlet near the floor.
I bent way over and pulled my head way back so that I could focus my way-old eyes on the outlet cover. It had a lightning bolt on it. We flipped the cover open to reveal a switch that said ON in one direction and OFF in the other. My brother flipped the switch.
And then there was light.
© jumpingfish by David Hasan is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
