The Other Don Kelly

Anne and I are up in Burlington VT, chasing winter conditions, trying to get our XC ski on and I think we found what we’re looking for. We drove up yesterday, today is for hanging out in town, and tomorrow and Wednesday look good for Bolton and von Trapp. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that I seem to have some cold, or an allergy, possibly to something in our hotel room, making me all headachy when I sleep. I had them change the pillows (I hope it helps, but the room stinks of carpet cleaner), and I took some benadryl; I want nothing more than to go take a nap, but we’re trying to stay outside for as long as possible. Ugh…

Seen on my neighborhood ride-about, a mural of Calypso Island at West End Park.

I’ve got a few spam blockers, and a lot of blacklisting, running on the site, but every so often something slips through…

Hi,

Love what you guys are doing but like I said, I noticed some leverage for improvement regarding video content, particularly on donkelly.net. Including even one video would Improve metrics like the below:

• Brands that use video marketing grow their year-over-year revenue 49% faster than brands that don’t. (Wirebuzz)
• 59% of executives say they would rather watch a video than read text. (Wordstream)
• Social video generates 1200% more shares than text and image content combined. (Wordstream)
• Nearly 50% of internet users look for videos related to a product or service before visiting a store. (Google)
• Shoppers who view demo videos are 1.81 times more likely to make a purchase than non-viewers. (Adobe)
• Companies that use videos in their marketing have 27% higher clickthrough rate and 34% higher conversion rates than those that don’t. (Buffer)
• 80% of consumers believe demonstration videos are helpful when making purchases. (Blue Corona)

So if you think this could be a good solution for donkelly.net, let me know and we can discuss for a few minutes next week, schedule a call here [deleted]

I feel kind of embarrassed for them, really — a proposal to add video (as if that’s hard), to “increase business” on a, you know, personal blog, just in time for “pivot to video” to collapse into a punchline, all written in a style that’s both chatty, and reminiscent of a middle-schooler who’s not keeping up with their homework.

Listening: Neil Young & Crazy Horse, “Oh Susannah.”

We saw Anita Hill the other night at Zoellner. It was a really good (and sadly timely) speech, to a packed and appreciative crowd. I looked around at the women who were there, especially the women of color, many of whom knew, from experience, exactly what she was talking about, and couldn’t help but think about the white governor of Virginia, currently engulfed in a racist controversy, while the black but male vice-governor is engulfed in a sexual misconduct scandal. Democrats! C’mon guys… But they were products of privilege in one way or another, exempt from accountability until now. Maybe from now on we should be looking outside this privilege bubble for leadership…

Anyway, I feel a rant coming on, let’s change the subject.

I’ve been feeling pretty bad since the Chili Contest, and now I know why: I caught a cold which as been building and colonizing me this week. It peaked Thursday and has been receding since; I woke up today feeling much better, surprisingly better even if I’m not 100%. Vito’s wife used to say that cold weather kills germs in winter, and here it is, sunny but freezing again. Coincidence?

We’ve also had some sad news this week: the girlfriend of a young friend passed away. It’s been a terrible situation — “nightmare” is the word that keeps coming to mind. Rest in peace Katie — she was only 32.

I just got back from the Canal Museum’s Volunteer Appreciation Luncheon, and am now waiting for our snow/non-snow weather event to come down.

Things have been pretty quiet around here otherwise, though we did host the CAT holiday party last weekend, and saw If Beal Street Could Talk, followed by a stop at Bonn Place, with John and Donna last night. (Tonight we’re seeing the new RBG movie with Shari and Rick –two movies in a row!)

What have I been up to? I’ve been practicing and playing my cello, doing some reading and historical research — I’ve been on a “history of Bethlehem” kick lately, and have been obsessed with the old settlement at Christian’s Spring — and have also been working on an updated map of the trails at Walking Purchase Park.

This map has been long overdue, but I’ve been waiting on the trail guys to finish their reconfiguration/re-blazing/renaming project. They’re pretty close to done now, trail blazes all over the place with the new names posted, so I went up and photo-documented the trails and then re-did the trail maps. I’m not too happy with some of the choices they made, but hey — it’s not my circus anymore.

I also downloaded some old aerial photos of the Valley, taken about 1938. I took one that showed our neighborhood and part of Sals, georeferenced it, and put it on my map as a partly transparent overlay. For some reason the photo looked almost like hieroglyphics when I zoomed in, at other times like a blowup of some still from German Expressionist cinema, and in the end seemed just plain creepy. The overlay was almost like a ghost.

Hi! I’m back! Welcome to 2019!

I’m sitting in the living room right now, listening to the radio on a rainy day — WXPN has a program going in right now, “50/50,” where every Saturday afternoon (for 50 weeks) they play the songs from a different year. Today’s year is 1979, a weird and transitional one musically, and we’ve heard everything from punk and New Wave, to disco, to what eventually became good old classic rock. An interesting mix.

Some Lists:

Places We’ve Been This Year

• Montreal with John & Donna
• Jamestown and Colonial Williamsburg, VA
• Durham, NC to visit Emmi & Kyle
• The Adirondacks with the Felker clan
• Montpelier VT, for Ben’s graduation
• Michigan (Ann Arbor and the Upper Peninsula)
• Sudbury, ON, and Niagara Falls
• Nashville, TN for Brian & Heather’s wedding
• Columbus, OH

Rides

• Wissahickon (VMB )
• Merli-Sarnoski Park (VMB)
• Philadelphia via the Schuylkill River Trail
• Road Scholars Rides
• Road and MTB in the Adirondacks
• Wildcat Ridge, NJ
• Tahquamenon Falls & Indian Lake Road Rides, MI
• Marquette and Calumette, MI
• Wissahickon (with Hope & Renee)

I’m over on Southside now, blogging from Sagra Beans, the new coffee house in the new building, basically where the late, lamented Wildflower Cafe used to be. Well, “lamented” might be too strong of a word: I pretty much never went there, hadn’t been inside for years before they closed (years ago), but still.

I have to say though, that this place is pretty nice. They have the usual coffee shop problem — they don’t lack the manpower, but they do lack a system for quick customer throughput when things get busy: they had four people on line when I got there, and the place was shut down while one worker worked the espresso machine. Not a good situation for a caffeine-deprived queue!

This problem is not unique though; in fact I know of few coffee shops, ones worth going to, where this does not happen. On the plus side, these guys have plenty of space and plenty of seats, including several spacious bar-type seating areas — I was originally going to go to Lit, but their space was all taken: one or two people at each four-person table and a bunch of empty couches, unsuitable for laptops. I have all the room I want now, and the people here are also very friendly. They’ve got my recommendation!

What to do while I’m here? This place so new nobody put them on OpenStreetMap yet, so I went on and added them. (For “information source” when I uploaded the data, I was tempted to put “I’m there now.”) Then I did a little browsing, and a little blogging, and now my coffee is done and I’m ready to go.

Actually, I think I’ll stick around for a bit — they’re about to roast some coffee in this huge machine right in front of where I’m sitting, and it looks pretty interesting. I do have to get out of here soon though: I’m ready for rain, with raincoat, umbrella, waterproof laptop bag and all, but I still want to try and beat the storm. I’ll be driving over to Easton for my music lesson later, but I’m on foot for now.