Chris Vannoy

As a kid, we visited Civil War battlefields like some folks hunt Pokémon. We stopped at the ones along the way, and the ones that were a bit out of the way.

We did the Shenandoah Valley, all four near Fredericksburg (Federicksburg, The Wildness, Spotsylvania Courthouse, and Chancellorsville), Shiloh, Vicksburg, Brice’s Crossroads, Antietam and any others which we ran or planned across.

My Dad subscribed to Civil War Illustrated. Ken Burns “Civil War” series was a hit on PBS.

I ate the stuff up and to this day can name generals on both sides at various battles and engagements and whatnot.

The big kahuna, though, was always Gettysburg - the high water mark of the Confederacy and a huge, sprawling three day engagement across Pennsylvania peach orchards, wheat fields, round top hills, and dens of devils.

I remember going as a kid and doing the tour - I can’t recall if guided or self-directed - and stopping at every monument and plaque and reading every stitch.

I remember it all pretty fondly - in case you couldn’t tell.

Earlier today (note: I wrote this on June 19, 2023), I took my kids to Gettysburg.

And I left feeling differently - or maybe I arrived thinking differently and the experience reinforced it.

There’s a new visitors center now - all shiny and corporate. It feels like there’s more knickknacks in the gift shop (which feels huge compared to other national park service properties). There are tour companies out the wazoo - the helpful ticket lady could get you a private one if you wanted. There’s an efficient two theater system to churn visitors through the Morgan Freeman-voiced film and into the Cyclorama - a 360-degree painting that’s been there for a hundred years or so, now gussied up and in a custom-built theater.

This is all kind of expected from any of the National Parks big hitters. We’re heading to Independence Hall tomorrow and I kind of expect the same.

It doesn’t match the shabbiness and livedinedness of my memory. The Gettysburg battlefield in my head is more DIY, more bespoke, more haunting than it is Haunted Mansion (author note: I adore Haunted Mansion - just not here).

Some of that is probably the old man growing inside my 40+ year old frame. Kids today and all that.

What I’d like to talk about more is how I view things - like the Civil War itself - differently these days.

I grew up in an era and region that mythologized Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson more than a little. Reluctant fighters for their native state alongside their fellow Virginians. We never talked about their slaves or their horrifically racist views. Lee was a kindly gentleman - hell, he had half a college named for him! And Jackson to this day has a state park named after him in my (and his) native state of West Virginia.

And the start of the self-guided car tour at Gettysburg shortly gets into row after after row of monuments to men like these - men fighting against their government not for their states, but for the continued legal ability to own other people as property - and to continue to expand that ability to new territories forevermore.

I didn’t want to look at their monuments. I didn’t want to look at the statues of Lee, or for the boys of North Carolina or Mississippi or Louisiana. And I didn’t want to get photos of my kids next to them either. I don’t want to gaze upon these monuments to their rightfully lost cause of human suffering into perpetuity.

One of the more powerful things I do at my new job is at the end of the week I update a running document I call “Shipping Department News”, which is a list of all the stuff we deployed to production in the week.

It’s a bulleted list, and each item has a little description of what it does and why it matters.

Sometimes, there’s a screenshot or two or a humorous aside.

There are also a section with status and planning updates for upcoming stuff.

This document takes me 15 minutes or so each week to update, but it has so many benefits:

• We don’t have to bog down meetings with a lot of project status updates, since that’s all in the document
• When we do an external product update, we have an easy review of what we’ve deployed lately that can feed our narrative
• It emphasizes momentum and helps keep the company aligned on our direction

I mention all this because it’s a neat work idea you should totally steal if you’re in a similar engineering/product leadership sort of role, obviously. I’ve gone back to this approach four times in my career and it has killed each time.

But I also mention it because as I sit at my home office desk and reflect on the week, I’m thinking about stealing this idea for my own life.

I already journal each day - one daily page with a schedule and todos, and another running journal which I start my day with what I’m grateful for and end it with the three big wins (aside: I should talk more about what that looks like someday soon, too) - but am thinking about a similar weekly wrap for my life.

This week, for instance, would be something like:

• Appeared on a podcast for work: This is the first podcasting thing I’ve done in close to (if not more than) a decade. And it turned out great, and I found it more fun than I remembered. It’s something I might try to do more of.
• Led a product webinar at work: I’ve been watching other folks give roadmap reviews for several years now, and had a great time hosting one myself this week (I might find a non-gated version of that down the road).
• Dropped below 275 pounds: I’m down ~25 pounds since early November and it’s felt sustainable along the way. Bounced back up slightly after that low, but it’ll come around again.
• Started constantly running: The week before, I started running a few times a week - just running between every other utility pole for now - but I kept at this it week. My last run was the first one where I wasn’t maxing out my heart rate the whole time. This week, I also got a goal of running a 5K in May lodged in my head.
• Had lunch out with my wife twice: Once for Valentines Day and once again today.
• Got a janky part of our fence fixed
• Replaced a busted bathroom faucet on my own
• Finally made it back to my weekly trivia night
• Stayed out entirely too late last night to go see Ant-Man

I won’t always share this sort of update publicly - perhaps never again. But I’m also willing to bet some day in the future I’ll come back to this entry and read this and smile.

Not every week will be this good, either.

But I think this week is the one that will start the string. Once a week, writing down the big things that happened in my life - so I can remember, stay aligned, and emphasize my own momentum.

Hope you’re having a fabulous Friday (or whatever day it is when you happen to read this) out there.

shuts work laptop for the long weekend

I read a blog post recently by a fellow resident of Indianapolis who’s having a hard time lately and found themselves lamenting the lack of places for “Forest bathing” in Indianapolis (and cities like it).

It seemed familiar to me - as one of the ways I reset myself often is to go for a walk in the woods. Sometimes I go far afield - down to Brown County, or many a Indiana state park.

But more often, I stick around home.

So to help my internet friend out (should they ever see this), and to put a positive spin on things, here are places in and around Indianapolis that I’ve been able to find a quiet spot, sit a spell and look at trees.

In rough order of recommendation:

1. Fort Harrison State Park: A former military installation and World War II prisoner of war camp, this state park over in the Lawrence corner of Marion County features a handful of trails. For the best shot at solitude, take the Fall Creek Trail and alight on a bench along the steps up the bluffs next to Fall Creek, or pick a bench on the Camp Creek Trail. There are longer trails at the park, but these two are absent mountain bikers. There is an entrance fee, like all Indiana State Parks (a grumble for another day), but if you live in Indy, the $50 annual pass pays for itself in no time. Oh, and if you look around a bit, you can probably find back entrances to the park to skip the fee entirely - the best one is near the intersection of Fall Creek and Boy Scout Road.
2. Holliday Park: There’s a surprisingly gnarled set of short trails in this park alongside the White River west of Broad Ripple. Difficult to get a long hike in, but there are spots near the river that are tricky to get in or out of where you can grab a few minutes of peace (before grinding your way back uphill).
3. Ritchie Woods Nature Preserve: Our first foray out of Marion County - but barely. Just north of 96th Street and off Hauge Road, this small Fishers park has a small network of trails. Wandering off to the trails rightward into the woods will get you off the beaten path pretty quickly.
4. Skiles Test Nature Park: Another patch of woods. This one has a primary path running through it (which connects to the Fall Creek Greenway … and then to that back entrance to Fort Ben I mentioned), and also a slew of spurs off and into the woods proper.

There are more than those four. But those are my four go-tos when I need to get out into nature for a bit.

Always interested in learning new places, too!