Zach’s thesis notes

Yesterday I alluded to the fact that Zach was close to finishing his doctoral thesis. I remember it had something to do with sex roles in co-ed recreational leagues.

I know he had made video recordings of games as part of his research. I’ve seen the files in listings but never looked at them for more than a few seconds. Today I was looking through a set of folders that were from his iPhone. One of them was called ‘Notes’. It was an even dozen text files with dates in their filenames. The dates were all from the week before his death.

I’m going to share some of these as I think the insights are wonderful. Without looking at the videos, I’m not sure what sport he is talking about. Judging from the context, it could be soccer or volleyball or even basketball. The cool thing is that it kind of doesn’t matter. I suspect – and I think he did too – that the insights would carry over into any mixed sex game.

Here’s a sample from the first one:

Males start in serve for both
Both team have alternating and positions that appear to be set
Sayre comes up from the back line in front of the girl and makes the play. She is weak – he is hiding her.
What is the rule with people running up from the back line and getting spikes? Check on this
Male overplay on one side exposes the other, which is then exploited by opponent – it imbalanced the court and the team couldn’t recover.
Sayre continually creeping up – he would say that he needs to, and he’s not exactly wrong. But what does it say about coed that it puts you in position where gender is so polarizing.

Game two a girl starts at serve for both
Both of these teams are hopeless. Does it even matter to try and assess gender when everyone is so out of their element?

‘Serve’ implies volleyball to me. Here’s the next one, later the same day:

Lesser teams celebrate each other a lot more.
These teams are also dreadful. The guys especially. The girls on gold are significantly better than the guys, and they control the ball more. It’s a refreshing reversal.

Now the next day:

I’ve seen at least one of these teams before. They are terrible.
Guy starts at serve for both
The other team has only two girls
Shitty guy player tries to make a hero play instead of bumping it and loses the point instead. This is a running theme.
. . .
Two guys on the white team are literally running around in front of their girls, including one where the girl was standing still and the guy kind of bodies her out of the way. Wow.
Now, that girl is playing more tentatively, and they just lost two straight points because of her lack of aggression.
. . .
Interesting to watch a girl talking up a guy on her team – a role reversal all the way down to the encouragement for having done a basic thing right.
Now the guy is overplaying in front of another girl. Ironic.

And another day:

Per usual, the really shitty guy overplays in front of a girl. Maybe it’s not a gender thing but a general sucking at sports thing
. . .
Second game when it’s close and late, the best girl made a couple overplays into her guys zone to keep him from screwing up the play.
I realize that i type that approvingly, even though if a guy did the same thing I’d take issue

Another:

Guy comes up from the back line, cuts in front of his girl twice on consecutive plays. Is literally ignoring her being there – no acknowledgment whatsoever. And in this case he won the point and is celebrated by his teammates for hos efforts (although the marginalized girl didnt say anything)
That is the quintessential anecdote for guys wanting to play an extra game and coed is that outlet, so they recruit female bodies to stand on the field for their own pleasure. If guys could play in unlimited men’s leagues, would coed numbers go down?
. . .
See a girl literally get down in basically the fetal position and her guy jump over her to make a play on the ball. Sounds crazy but it happened.

This sounds more like soccer:

Girl plays defense on a guy, steals the ball from him in normal fashion, and there is a chorus of congratulations and affirmation for her. The same level of affirmation does not occur when a guy does this same thing minutes later, despite the plays being quite similar.
Guy makes a normal play and trips up a girl, then instead of running on, stops for a second and looks to help her up
Guy runs from across the field to take an OOB, going past three girls and loudly announcing that he’ll take the ball. The girls don’t even look to do that. And then his throw in is a two foot toss to a guy. And then he runs back across the field.
Even during the championship team picture after the last game, the girls all group together, even though about half of them are bigger or the same size than the guys who are all grouped behind them. And the girls strike a stereotypical sorority squat.

And this is the last one in its entirety. It’s the first one I read and the one that made me want to write this post:

11/12/15, 6:35 PM

Guys play reckless when they low skilled. The low skilled over aggressive male is a unique and dangerous addition to coed teams. He has hero tendencies that lead him disproportionately into his female teammates. Oddly, i feel
Like i don’t see him crowding out his male teammates.
I’ve smiled more watching this game than i have any other. The VSA team is very genuine and positive. I’m rooting for them.
Other team confers on strategy before the third game and it makes me wonder about the thought process with gender alternating (as both teams are doing).
Is it really possible to assess strategy though? Or the merits of it?
Even on the VSA team…guy runs around, overplays, and screws up an easy point his girl was about to get. She looks at him disgustedly.

Two days later he was dead.

Zach’s computer files

When Zach died, I took control of all his computer devices and transferred his files to my storage system. I’ve carefully preserved them pretty much without any editing. I sent copies to Emily, Jeremy and Sarah. I did go through his writing and organized it into a couple of folders. For whatever reason, he used misleading folder and file names so that was an interesting exercise.

‘Corleone’ was the name of the folder where he wrote about work things. His personal diaries were in a folder titled ‘Appendices’. The sub folders and file names were headed ‘Statistical Appendices’. What does it mean? Beats the heck out of me! He loved the movie Godfather II but what did it have to do with thoughts about work? We’ll never know. He was consistent with his naming format which included the dates. That helped.

There were a lot of files relating to his academic career that I didn’t touch. For a while, I thought his advisor might contact me to get copies. That never happened. Whatever Zach had nearly ready for publication sits untouched on my hard drive Promises by LSU administrators to get Zach a posthumous doctorate never materialized.

I’m mostly over it now.

Anyway, today I had time and was thinking about it so I went through his files and found and eliminated a lot of duplicates. Broadly speaking, I now have his school files under ‘Academics’, his writing under ‘Diaries’, and everything else in a few other miscellaneous folders (texts, financials, etc). Any pictures I found – and they were all over – are in my pictures folder under his name.

I found evidence that Zach went to some trouble to maintain his papers from his entire college career. Papers from Xavier and OSU were saved in various folders that had clearly been copied more than once. I didn’t try to read any of them today but I will get to them someday.

Zach speaks

I woke up this morning with an idea of publishing Zach’s journals. Not publishing like a book, just posting here on this blog. Piecemeal, like I’ve done before. I haven’t looked up how I treated it before but today I think I will not comment.

Here is his entry from this date in 2015:

4/18, Saturday morning

The week back to the normalcy was not excellent. I always say no bad days but this week really put that mantra to a test. It started with Sunday, where I was only marginally productive and didn’t really do a whole lot, but planned to go bed early and get a good nights sleep, then get up on Monday morning and kick ass. As always, this didn’t work…I couldn’t fall asleep for shit that night and ended up staying up until I don’t know how late and reading a 500 page Michael Crichton book. Which was entertaining but ultimately a bit redundant. So I slept like shit, got up Monday and was immediately annoyed by the cats, the rain, and the dirtiness of the house. All petty little things that are somewhat within my control and I just let it mentally derail me. So Monday was a day spent trying to not get too wet from the rain, making adjustments to golf class, and get too annoyed by how dirty the house became from Jake being gone and the cats being in our house for ten days. Then stats was useless that evening (shockingly) and I had to go make copies and print stuff out that evening, which basically crushed any chances of exercise for the day.

Tuesday was where the car really ran off the road. It rained a shit ton more Monday night add as I was getting ready to get dressed for the high school and everything, I realized that I had a serious issue of mold in my room, including on a lot of my nice clothes. So I was pretty annoyed, but at that point I didn’t realize the extent of it. But I did when I got home…it was everywhere, and had started growing on my dressers and on about 50% of the clothes and other items in my closets. So needless to say, I was pretty wonked…I spent a couple hours in the afternoon working on it before Kwame’s class, went to class, then came back home and stayed up until about 1am cleaning stuff and figuring out how bad it all was. Jake had finally gotten home and he came and calmed me down, which helped. And I think everything is taken care of, although some of it has already come back in the days since…and I’m also getting rid of a shit ton of stuff…clothes I don’t wear anymore, that big suitcase that I never use, some of my old NU bags, and other shit. So that was kind of liberating.

But it also meant I didn’t really get anything done Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, and Thursday was also a clunker of a day, so it was not a banner week. I think I’ve got it out of my system but it was rough on my working out (which I had attacked with so much zeal but closed the week with a whimper), as well as me getting good work done (which isn’t a huge huge deal, although I have one assignment I’ve officially procrastinated far too long).

I started trying to write longhand each morning for a few minutes and sort of like it, but sort of dislike it. It’s mostly just me bitching and then trying to get my head wrapped around what I want to accomplish for the day. So it’s not very pure. But I think there’s some value to it, although I’m not quite certain what it is yet.

The other thing hanging over this week was the mysterious absence of Garn, which isn’t a huge deal except I also had some research questions hanging over my head and some confusing WAP directions that he gave me. So each day I was dwelling on all that stuff and uncertain when he would be back for me to talk with him. I eventually got the research stuff under control, at least partially, and the WAP is also settled down. The upshot of this week is that it, 100% hammered home the realization that I really can’t put too much trust in Garn for anything outside of research (and even that I need to trust my own instincts). If he’s going to go MIA, which he did for four days this week, then I really can’t expect to get much from him. The teaching and the work responsibilities are what really bug me; I got an email from Dee this week stating that I wasn’t teaching this summer (per Dr. Solmon) and I brought it up to Garn and he assumed that I was applying for a research award. And I told him I wasn’t because I wanted to take classes, and although we hashed out the conversation, it all makes me very uneasy. I can see a scenario where I’ll get left out to dry for the summer as far as income, just because the only affirmation I have about it is an ambiguous email from Dee and Garn’s word, which is proven to not be trustworthy in matters like this.

In his defense, he’s continued to give me feedback (sort of) on my manuscript and he continues to be exceedingly complimentary. He also nominated me for a national writing award through the AKA, which I received, and I appreciate. I don’t quite know the context of it (like is it really a big deal or no?) and he was really pumped up about it. So he isn’t useless, but I just need to condition myself to be a little more self-reliant in preparing myself for the future.

I nutted up and sent Kwame an email inquiring about TAing for him this summer for Sport in Society and he quickly and positively affirmed that. I think with him I just need to keep pushing slowly, since I don’t think he’s the type to volunteer assistance per se; but if I go to home with specific questions or asking his opinion, he seems willing to help. I need to cultivate that relationship, even if he might be leaving LSU soon. But that’s one area where I just need to go and do it on my own, to help my future.

I also spent a few minutes perusing the job boards looking at what’s out there and it was a sobering reminder that my job search will not be easy…especially because my area is kind of gray, in terms of specialty. I don’t really fit into sport management but I also don’t fit into “Kinesiology”, for the most part. So I need to do more now of trying find or create more specific niches and roles for myself. The problem is, again, that I’m doing this on my own, and I can’t really depend on Garn to help. I’m wondering more and more if I’m going to have to do a post-doc or some sort of shorter job out of school just because I won’t have quite the depth of experience…

At the end of the day, I just want to get out of LSU. Garn, for all his positives, is really being weighed down by his negatives, and I’ve kind of come full circle. I stayed at LSU because I thought it would be a consistent, more comfortable, family type environment with people who supported me and would nurture me and that I could trust. And from what I can tell…that’s not exactly the case. I misread the situation, and hopefully the next two years don’t make me regret it. I don’t regret it now, but I don’t want to hate being here either, and I’m having more and more days where I do…

But here’s the good: since I last wrote, Emily and I have made plans for three visits. I’m going up for two weeks in May, and we’ll spend part of that in AA plus Jimmy and Andrew are coming up from Cincy. That all coming together is a huge relief, because I wanted to spend a lot of time there but didn’t want to just be sitting around her parents house the whole time. She’s also made plans to come down here again in June/July and we’ll spend most of that trip going to Atlanta, which will be awesome. And then I made flights and plans to go to AA for the wedding in August too. So that’s a lot of great things to look forward to, and that makes everything easier. And she and I are as chipper as ever. It’s a good status quo and I hope we keep progressing.

The bad: the Giants are terrible. Not a fun start to the season. But I’ve started re-reading Ball Four, and it’s utterly incredible. I’m a better reader now than I have in the past, and it’s such a wonderful joy to experience it.

Rec league basketball

We watched a movie last night.

This is not about the movie.

I watched the credits, as I always do, and saw a name from Zach’s past. The character was a minor one – really just a cameo – so I really didn’t remember what he looked like. The movie was from 2014 and I hadn’t seen James since about 20 years ago when he and Zach were in rec league basketball together. They were pals at 12 years old but it didn’t last into high school.

Still, it was a good memory. The basketball team had their moments but they weren’t overpowering. They went into the championship tournament hoping to win one game but things started working for them and they got to the championship game against the hot shots.

It seemed like there was always one team in rec league that was put together by an ambitious dad who thought his kid was NBA material. Typically they steamrolled everyone else. It always pissed me off when they ran the score up against gawky kids who didn’t spend every free moment practicing basketball.

These were the guys Zach and James’ team were playing for the championship. I don’t remember it well enough to narrate the details but I remember that they played smart and tough against the hot shots. James’ dad was not the official coach but he was a savvy basketball guy who participated in the huddles and helped the kids believe in themselves. Jeremy was there too, providing support.

Well, they won, and were joyous.

In the big picture it would seem meaningless but our personalities are built from many small things. It was a fun moment. Rec league basketball was usually so frustrating. Zach was tall but not the tallest on the team. Soon after this, he really started growing and went on to play on high school and college basketball teams.

The actor turned out to have been born in 1965. Not even close!

Here are James and Zach in their championship shirts:

Zach recipe

One more thing from the box. Zach had given me a recipe for a ‘breakfast casserole’ once. I had written it on a scrap of paper.

Here’s what I wrote:

baking dish 3″ x 14 x 8
frozen hashbrowns
turkey sausage/chorizo
yellow onions
12-8 eggs – scramble
garlic & spices
cheese (cheddar) bag + 1/2
layer
325° 1 hr 10′
remove foil cover
return to oven 10-15 mins to brown

I ate it once at his house but, sad to say, I never made it myself.

Tschotskes

‘A small bauble or miscellaneous item‘ says Wikipedia. Websters has ‘knickknack, trinket’. The word always had a connotation to me of ‘worthless except to one person’.

I did some cleaning in the garage the other day and unearthed a box filled with stuff that I had had on display on my apartment. There really isn’t a place for it here but I brought the box up to look through carefully. It’s mostly pictures in frames, which I am loath to get rid of. Sepi has lots of paintings, many of which are still in the garage, but paintings and guitars, not family pictures, are our principal wall adornments.

The other things in the box I would definitely call tschotsckes. A little clay wind chime that wouldn’t survive being put out of doors here. Little souvenirs from Germany, Zanesville, Paraguay and other places: plates, ashtrays, trivets.

And some things that remind me of Zach: a button with the picture from his first year in Little League. A ceramic hand print labelled December 1991 when he would have just turned 3. A ‘Panik 12′ button, referring to the Giants’ second baseman Joe Panik, that was on his backpack. A ceramic ‘Z’ that Rosalie made a couple of years ago.

And something I picked up on the side of the street across from his house less than 36 hours after his death:

It’s the lens from his sunglasses that he was wearing that day.

It caught me by surprise. I hadn’t thought about it for a long time. I suppose I would see it occasionally on the table as I went in and out of my apartment. Realistically, I should just toss it. I’ve got all the pictures. I even went back and watched the video I made that day walking along the street with the cars zipping by only about ten feet from me at 40 or 50 miles an hour. In the video, I see the lens in the grass alongside the road and bend down to pick it up. I was not sure it was his, but it all hangs together and I choose to think that it was his.

The ‘Z’ is now up on my dresser where I will see it every day along with Hobbes. I will offer the hand print to other members of the family. The buttons . . . I’ll guess I’ll ask if anyone else wants them. I don’t expect anyone will. Jeremy might want the Panik button.

the last time I saw Zach

I don’t know why, but I woke up this morning thinking about the last time I saw Zach. It wasn’t really Zach at that point. It was just his body.

We were at the funeral home on the Tuesday afternoon of that week in Baton Rouge. For some reason, I don’t remember Sarah but I remember Jeremy being there. Zach was lying up at the front of the little chapel and there was a railing with a kneeler in front of it. I didn’t kneel, but I touched Zach’s lower leg and I remember thinking that it felt like him: solid and muscular. I don’t know anything about rigor mortis and I certainly wasn’t thinking about it then. Maybe it was just rigor mortis.

Of course, I looked at his face and I thought it was odd that they had put a bunch of pancake makeup on him. It was much later that I saw the police photos of the accident scene and I realized how horrific the injury to his head had been.

I didn’t feel any need to pray over his body or ‘say goodbye’ or anything like that. I wanted to touch him to convince myself it was all real. Emily was towards the back of the chapel with her mother and sisters. We would have been meeting in California in about a month’s time but I went back there and introduced myself and we all talked quietly.

At one point, I remember looking up to the front and saw Jeremy kneeling there and I thought maybe I should go and do that too. But I didn’t want to interrupt him and later people starting moving to leave. I don’t remember where we were going. We certainly weren’t rushed by the funeral home but a consensus seemed to develop that we were done.

The next day we went back and got the ashes.

I had them at my apartment for a long time. I believe I wrote about that. It wasn’t Zach – neither was the body – but it was the closest I had. Now ‘he’ is here:

In the end it’s all memories, which is why I write here. Our oral tradition is pretty much gone unless you count videos. There’s a chance these memories will survive for Rosalie and Noah and maybe their children to read and know a little bit about their ancestors. I know I would have eagerly read stories from my grandparents and great-grandparents. Eventually, their world recedes but their personalities would have shone through, I believe.

memories

Day 54 yesterday. Sepi and I went to Santa Clara yesterday. We saw Mom for the first time since early March. No touching, but we sat in the patio and chatted for a while. I brought some salt for the water softener.

After we got home I was spinning through FaceBook and saw that it was Noah’s birthday . . .

11 years old and he’s still the spitting image of Zach, at least to my eyes.

And once again, I am so pleased that he has a stable home environment to grow up in. Ally and Dave are terrific parents.

Well, the whole thing prompted some pillow talk with Sepi. She didn’t remember the story of how we found out about Noah and how Ally and Dave brought him up to Michigan to meet the family. What a tremendous thing that was! I believe I’ve documented here how difficult it was for me to accept him for what he was.

I still love Dave’s simple comment: ‘I’m the Dad.’

So this morning the power went out and I couldn’t work on the big computer as I had been planning so I picked up the iPad. This is the one that had belonged to Zach and still has some foibles related to his ownership. It still has access to his Google Drive even though I do not have the password.

It isn’t his regular Google Drive account. I got all the stuff off of that early on. This one – I think – was for his research into gender roles in intramural sports. It has videos of some IM flag football games. When I looked at them this morning I thought, these have no value to anyone any more. I deleted a couple, then noticed the date: November 10. Aiee!

Now I’m not sure – still, after all this time! – that I should be deleting anything. Then, when I went to crop the photo, I noticed that the dates were 2014. You probably can’t tell on this tiny photo but they’re all October and November 2014. Oh well. I haven’t heard from his thesis advisor since about six months after Zach’s death. He was going through some pretty serious changes then. I’m going to go ahead and delete them.

It’s even possible that I already sent this stuff to Alex and I don’t even remember doing it.

The only other thing of interest is Zach’s account name. He actually made two of them, both named Tom Brady with emails of woodrowreasearch and woodrowreasearch1@gmail.com. I haven’t tried to get into those accounts. I spent a lot of time in the first year going through Zach’s real emails and cleaning up things there. Whatever is in that inbox is way out of date. If someone else knows how to get into it and finds something of value, please let me know.

Or not.

Day 55.

Shakespeare Notes

I haven’t written about Zach in a long time. Today I was cleaning up my Google Drive and looked at this file called ‘Shakespeare Notes’. I knew it was Zach’s but I didn’t know why I was saving this one file. Maybe it was so I could write this post! Actually, I had two others but they are little video files that I will not share at this time. They are not really significant but poignant. Jake, if you ever read this, you are in them with Zach!

Zach, if I haven’t mentioned this before, used misdirection in many of his file names, particularly those which were personal. I knew the content had nothing to do with old Will but I couldn’t remember what was in there or why I was saving it there. I’ve had a folder on my desktop computer with all my Zach related stuff for a long time. Not just stuff related to the aftermath of his death but everything I could get off of his computer, iPad and phone. Voice mails, texts, pictures. It’s a lot of stuff.

I don’t have a lot to say about the ‘Shakespeare’ file. The system date is December 4, 2015, which means I modified it slightly a couple of weeks after Zach died.There is no internal date but his one reference to getting his Masters puts it in the 2013-2014 time frame.

Here’s the whole thing:

January 1- May/Juneish (or longer?)

- - - Physical/Health
      - Tighten up body. Maintain a body weight in the 190-200 range, but focus on cutting body fat.
      - Create a balance between core workouts and cardio. Indulge in basketball but don’t default.
      - Diet: Maintain what I’m doing.
        
        Focus on salads and vegetables where possible
    - Personal Development
      - Make my reading list more visible and not out of sight out of mind.
        
        Balance the intellectual books with pleasure reading. Don’t forget how much fun it is to read a book.
      - Focus on current events and news, if not religiously.
        
        Don’t act arrogant about the world around you just because you think you have some of the systems figured out.
        
        Listen to NPR podcasts once a day
        
        Keep reading and writing on what is happening around you
        
        Check Facebook max three times/day
      - Less thinking and more doing. Don’t feel good just because you mentally processed something. Take knowledge to the next level.
      - Conversely, don’t default to critical. Take time to think and process before being arrogant, especially in social situations.
    - Emotional Sustenance
      - 1 meaningful phone conversation or letter a week. Just a quick note goes a long way. Do not backburner, considering it only takes 5-10 minutes.
        
        Relationships always need nurturing.
      - Take advantage of time away from work to forget about work. Whether it is short vacations or enhanced personal retreats, don’t let work consume your thoughts or give you a fresh perspective. Remember how beneficial this is.
      - Remember a lot of people look up to you or believe in you and want you to succeed.

July 1-December 31

- - - - Physical/Health:
        
        Lose the gut. Focus on consistent core workouts as well as general exercise, to strengthen the lower back, heart, and abdominal region. Explore yoga options(ADD MORE DEVELOPMENT)
        
        Focus on posture, sitting up straight and walking with shoulders pushed back
        
        Diet: reduced sweets. No alcohol. Portion control (make the appetite smaller).

- - - - Focus on salads/vegetables, diversify entrees.
        
        Look into blender (for fruits) and George Foreman (for chicken mainly). Smaller appetite means money saved.
        
        No red meat except special occasions.
        
        At least 90 oz. water a day. No Gatorade except with exercise.
        
        Vitamins? Consider later once budget is more stable
      - Personal Development:
        
        Make a visible reading list ( a la the queue). 15 minutes of a book/magazine a day (or 3 hours a week). Dedicate time to reading
        
        Current events—either at work or at home, must stay up on what is going on—focus on the morning coffee. Spend an equal amount of time on the coffee as I do with ESPN/FB.
        
        Maintain reflection/journal, make notes on a daily basis and weekly put 30-60 minutes aside for a “things I learned this week.” Stay focused and don’t let yourself get caught on little tangents
        
        Once settled, starting making connections on my options for masters programs at LSU and begin to develop my plan and vision for the future as they relate to those options.
        
        Eye on the prize: University President. The time has come for me to become who I say I am.
      - Emotional Sustenance
        
        Be very intentional by staying in contact—utilize emails and Facebook, send out the form letters at proper times. Remember that people love you and there can never be too much dialogue—especially focus on Troy, Dave, Josh, Molly—look at their development on both personal and professional. Second tier: Deb/Karl, Amy, Rae, the bros, Joey, Ola, more
        
        Write one meaningful letter/note each week
        
        Explore the culture, keep making close connections but don’t force it
        
        Remember to take vacations and take advantage of being in 20’s—Atlanta, Midwest, East Coast. Getting away for a day or two can be very valuable.
        
        Keep updating or maintaining a bucket list and Socratic appendices. A little materialism can sometimes make a big impact.

Noah at Devil’s Slide

Zach would ‘pose’ for photos in scenic locations usually by assuming a mock amazed look often with his arms stretched out. The picture on the front page of this blog is a perfect example. In this one he doesn’t have his arms stretched out but it is one of my favorites from his last visit to California in 2014.

I wanted to take Noah’s family to Devil’s Slide not because I wanted to stage a similar photo but just because it’s an awesome place. Actually, although I had my camera, I wasn’t even thinking about it.

Then I saw Noah standing in the exact same place. OMG! I had to scramble to get my camera out. Noah doesn’t stay in any one place for very long. He wasn’t looking out to sea, but reading the sign there. About five seconds after I snapped this, he bolted to something else.

Category Archives: Zach Stories