Chipping away
Tortilla chip-shard after tortilla chip-shard, we work our way to the bottom of the bowl. Have I lost my mind? Will I lose my readers? Only 36 ways to find out.
It’s 9:25 p.m. and am I really doing this?
Yes, for the third straight week, I’m doing a column-by-numbers routine. Only this time, I don’t know how far it will go. Could be 50, could be 100, likely something in between, from the looks of it.
1. Yes, I’m going to have a tortilla chip for every item I write.
2. Which means I am currently savoring a chip—or, more accurately, a chipette, a small shard of a chip. When I finish writing this item, I’ll have my second one.
3. Fear not, this’ll get much better. I actually have some things of note to share. At least, notable to me. A few may be as salty as the chips I’m feasting on.
4. Bridgett just dropped by my once-again, once-in-awhile office (aka Zach’s former bedroom). I had been working out of Maggie Rose’s bedroom, but she returned home Friday after remaining on campus the past two months after her college graduation. With some European travels ahead, she’s here for the weekend, forcing me to lug my laptop and other work equipment a whole 25 feet1 from her bedroom to my current space—the hardships I endure!).
5. FOOTNOTE #1: To estimate the distance of my nomadic office transition, I paced it off, like a ref moving the football after a roughing-the-passer penalty. Football season is upon us, folks!
6. Within a few moments, Bridgett improved my living/working conditions: Showed me how to put the two shelves within the bookcase, demonstrated how the fan could be plugged in and blow breeziness my way, and arrayed my work laptop and Topps Baseball Card illustrated encyclopedia2 on different levels of the bookcase—levels, of course, that hadn’t even existed 20 second earlier.
7. FOOTNOTE #2: Only the coolest birthday gift I’ve ever gotten—images of Topps baseball cards over a 35-year span, from 1951 to 1985. I collected cards from 1976 to 1981. Though my collecting phase was somewhat brief, what’s still strong is my enjoyment of all the memories they spark—and the rabbit holes inspired by these “cardboard gods,” as Josh Wilker dubs it.
8. Obviously, after 31 years of marriage, Bridgett’s had a profound impact on my life. Without her, I’ve long only half-joked, I might be living under a bridge in Montana. No disrespect intended to bridges, Montana or unhoused persons—aka “homeless.”3 )
9. FOOTNOTE #3: As longtime and even relatively new readers of this column know, some of my favorite relatives have been homeless. Well, relative, singular: my brother Phil, who endured many years of homelessness but thankfully has had housing since May 2021. He shows up later in this week’s column. (Jump ahead to #29 if you wish.)
10. I’ve been to Montana once in my life, a weekend 27 Septembers ago in Kalispell on the edge of Glacier National Park. When we were in the final stages of flying in, I really feared the plane was going to crash as we bounced around. Another passenger, a veteran of numerous trips, reassured me, chuckling that this was business-as-usual because of the effect that the Rocky Mountains had in creating the choppiness.
11. I’ve had limited international excursions—Mexico and Canada in the 20th century barely count. Only two years ago did I need a passport for our trip to Italy. But I’ve been to 42 states—Alaska, Alabama, Delaware, Idaho, Mississippi, New Mexico, South Dakota and Utah have eluded me.
12. I really have to remember to pluck a chip shard with each item I wrap up. So far, so good—I think—but with literary inspiration like what’s come so far, you can understand if I “get in a zone.”
13. This free association style of writing is easier and harder than my traditional style of column writing.
Easier: like improvisation, I take a “yes, and…” approach. That means I get in a flow.
Harder: I have little, if any, idea where this is going and while it can be fun, I also have to remember that although I’m the initial audience, I’m not the only audience. So far, at least.
14. After last week’s column, I was encouraged by a subscriber—a paid one, no less—who found my musings hilarious and helpful in providing a diversion from a profound hardship in their life. My reply, in part: “Glad that my writing could lift your spirits at least a little. Given the hellacious stuff afoot, don't know if I'm losing my mind or if writing this way is helping me keep what's left of my mind.”
15. As that remark suggests, I’ve found it increasingly difficult to take in the troubling news that is like so much toxic waste. So this week I’ve kept my head down and avoided getting anywhere close to the weeds. It’s good for my mental health, and I’m grateful for those staying engaged and vigilant and actively fighting the good, pro-democracy fight. I just need a break from the madness.
16. This week, I was a team-building, goal-setting, problem-addressing facilitator at my job. As part of that, I asked everyone to list on separate slips of paper one or two positive adjectives about everyone else in the room (there were 15 of us).
I’d been part of a group that did this exercise many years ago and found it very encouraging at that time. At the end of our session this week, a colleague and I read a sampling of a few words of praise about each person, then distributed the full set of slips to each individual. I recommend it to you, next time you’re in a setting where it might make sense.
17. Word of the week and I honestly don't know how it sprang to mind: “pernicious,” which means “having a harmful effect, especially in a gradual or subtle way,” according to Googles.4
18. FOOTNOTE #4: I know it’s “Google,” but I get a kick out of saying (and writing) Googles. And, yes, I realize that Google isn’t proper sourcing, but is the conduit for me finding that definition online.
19. Is that a round of applause I’m hearing for deciding to place footnotes next to the spots where they pop up?
20. Word of the week, part deux: “planful.” I heard someone use it multiple times in a presentation this week and thought, “Is that an actual word?” Why, yes, I discovered—it surely is. It means what you’d think it means: the act of making plans, basically.
21. I have no plans to use “planful” any time soon in conversation. Maybe I’ll get there, some day. I’m much more apt to be playful than planful, and I can see where those might seem like dueling banjos. If you’re too playful, then it can undermine plans, which seem a tad serious.
But what if your plan is to be playful?
22. I have found that when giving seminars on a topic—such as numeracy5—it pays to be playful. Creating a fun environment, especially as opposed to a dry one of “just the facts” delivery, is a key way to promote attention and engagement.
23. FOOTNOTE #5: Math literacy. In short, knowing how to “get” numbers, especially in the context of how they fit into our day-to-day lives.
24.Anyone wishing to file a complaint that I’m using footnotes as bonafide numbered items, please send a self-addressed stamped envelope to:
T. Tam Norab
Office of the Footnote Adjudicator
P.O. Box 112358
Pueblo, Colorado 81001
25. As a kid, my only awareness of Pueblo, Colorado, was a commercial for the U.S. Consumer Information Catalog that directed folks to send a postcard there in order to receive a free government publications catalog.
26. The only way I was going to remember what that commercial was promoting was to Google it. Thanks, Googles!!
Did you skip the public service announcement video? It’s quite funny. Don’t pass go and don’t collect $200—before reading on, check it out!
I’ve barely made a dent in this bowl of chips. Time to grab handfuls—the way I usually do.
At nearly two hours, this is the longest a bowl of chips has ever lasted around me.
I took Phil to the Chicago Bears preseason game at Soldier Field last Sunday evening. It was an impromptu thing: I got a couple of tickets off StubHub, asked Phil if he wanted to join me and, after initially declining, he gave it some thought and called me back with this reversal: ”I don’t know what I was thinking when I said `no.’”
I suspect he was thinking how much effort it would take. And he was right—this was no walk in the park. But one of our first rewards was this breath-taking view of the Second City skyline, moments before the 7 p.m. kickoff:
30. As my prior note alluded, we had a breath-taking adventure just to get to this spot—our breathing came out more like gasps after we hiked 34 rows in this 35-row section of the nose-bleeds. That final ascent, capping an hourlong journey from his apartment, was a local version of summiting Mount Everest.6
31. FOOTNOTE #6: Though excited to see a professional football game with him for the first time, I was genuinely concerned that I was jeopardizing Phil’s health on our trek. Since he stopped panhandling 11 months ago, he’s gone from walking an estimated eight miles a day (Phil’s estimate) to a sedentary lifestyle.
32. In retrospect, I am astounded that Phil was doing all that walking, including hours of pacing alongside cars as they stopped at one of the state’s busiest intersections, while drowning in alcohol and addicted to heroin-laced-with-fentanyl. I’m astounded, but not baffled: Phil’s told me that those substances were what fueled him.
33. On Sunday evening, fueled only by water he’d sip occasionally, Phil lumbered at an exceedingly slow pace the one mile from his apartment to Soldier Field; like Aesop’s fable of “The Tortoise and the Hare,” we triumphed through steady progress.
34. A former Division III college football player, Phil still has the determined athlete in him. He needed that grit on the walk back home, too—after a circuitous route to Michigan Avenue, a bus took him back the final several blocks, fortunately.
Toward the end of the Bears’ rout of the Buffalo Bills. 35. The sportswriter in me feels compelled to note that the Bears’ 38-0 shellacking of the Buffalo Bills—a perennial Super Bowl contender—was fun to watch, but must be consumed with a shaker full of salt. This is preseason, after all, and both teams are playing guys who won’t be on the roster when the regular season begins. Plus, as a precaution against injury, the Bills kept their best player, quarterback Josh Allen, on the sideline the entire game.
36. A shaker full of salt is what this last handful of chips tasted like. The best part: they're all gone.
See above, within the column copy.
See above, within the column copy.
See above, within the column copy.
See above, within the column copy.
See above, within the column copy.
See above, within the column copy.
Line that made me laugh. "I also have to remember that although I’m the initial audience, I’m not the only audience. So far, at least.."
Word that made me go "what?" today. "Confabbing."
File under [A]Musings.