After Monday night’s and Tuesday’s computer updating sessions, I spent today … on the computer. All day, tinkering with Adobe Premiere Pro. Guess what we’re talking about in class tomorrow? Premiere! That’s right! How were you able to divine that? You’re so keen. So sharp minded and clear eyed!
Why, if there’s one thing I tell everyone I meet, it’s that they should read this site, so that they, too, could be among the most keen, sharp-minded and clear-eyed people on the world wide web. I tell so many people this that I forget who I tell, which inevitably means I tell the same people over and over. And the ones that get it, they’re reading this, right now. Thanks, friends!
I tell everyone this.
I don’t meet that many people, though.
Anyway, it took about seven hours of Premiere today, trying to figure out how I would distill down almost two decades of sporadic video editing, several years of goofing off with, and critically working with, Premiere — including the seven hours of considerable focus today — to figure out what to do tomorrow. This is an intro class. They’ll be using Premiere a few more times this term, and throughout their college experience. How much is enough?
The great thing about Premiere, which will be one of my initial truisms tomorrow, is that there are about 10 ways to do everything. The other great thing about Premiere is that you can use this program daily and still learn from other people.
The downside to Premiere is that you can use this program daily and still learn from other people.
Also, some people in my class have some to a fair amount of experience with Premiere already, but most don’t.
Oh, and I can do about 60 or 90 minutes on this (because I am a highly dynamic speaker) before I lose their attention.
So, I’ve decided, we’ll talk about the project panel, the source panel, the program panel, the timeline panel and eight of the nine tools on the modern Premiere. We’ll talk about audio next week. And all of this took about seven hours to figure out today.
Time now for the 11th installment of We Learn Wednesdays, where I ride my bike to find all of the local historical markers in this county. Why by bike? So glad you asked. You learn new things and see new stuff by bike that you won’t discover at the speed of a car, even a slow-moving car, making the bike the ideal way to undertake a project like this. Counting today’s discoveries I have listed 24 of the 115 markers found in the Historical Marker Database.
Today’s markers are down by the big river, in a beautiful and beloved and quietly neglected area. The sort of place people couldn’t find without a map unless they grew up. The kind of place where nothing opens on Sundays. The kind of place where there aren’t stores or gas stations. People live and love and farm and commute and remember their heroes.
The memorial itself is rather generic, but around these markers are engraved bricks. (The local Ruritan Club offered them in 2013 at $55 per.) Memorials and honorary stones filled with names and units and the wars and conflicts in which the men served. I counted about seven dozen of them.
This memorial sits beside a T-intersection. It is surrounded by two fields, a private residence and the municipal building, which I showed you a few days ago.
It seems a quietly proud little place. Some 2,580 people live in that community, one of those sprawling sort of places that covers a lot of ground, but distant folks all share the same small post office. The day I was out there, it was quite lovely indeed.
There meaning the Alloway Creek Watershed, where I found this marker about the restoration of more than 3,000 acres of wetlands and upland edge (land at higher elevation than the alluvial plain or water). One of the bigger parts of this project is, apparently, trying to control Phragmites an invasive plant that is trying to choke out more beneficial marsh plants. They call it foxtail around here, and that reed grass is beautiful, but not ideal for the local ecology.
This marker also tells us the Native Americans called the area Wootsessungsing, which is a word you’ll find five times on the web. Two are in reference that marker, two referencing the old fort that was built nearby (believed to be offshore of the modern river’s course) and once, here. Wootsessungsing saw the Swedish build their fort, Helsingborg or Fort Elfsborg, in 1643, and then the English rolled up in 1675.
Some of the old English homes are still in this area, the sign tells us, including the Abel and Mary Nicholson House – a 1722 patterned-end brick house (which is nearby, but a world away) and the Hancock House (which we’ll see in this space next week).
Early in the recorded history of the region, the sign continues, portions of the area were diked and farmed. Hunting and trapping were dominant activities in the 20th century.
PSEG, by the way, is a giant group of old electric and transportation companies. Formed in 1903, they grew so big that the government busted them up in 1943. Ultimately, they serve 1.8 million gas customers and 2.2 million electric customers. Like every big concern, they do some good, and they receive some well earned criticism. NOAA gave PSEG a big award a few years back, for instance, for this estuary program.
The day I was there, the weather was mild, the water was up, that little corner of everywhere felt peaceful, three old friends were sitting under a shade tree catching up on their latest stories and I enjoyed finding myself out among some small bits of history.
There was another marker in that same spot, badly sun-damaged, titled “Waving Acres of Grass.” It read.
Salt marshes are one of the most productive habitats in the world and possess many surprising qualities and benefits – protecting the mainland from flooding and the effects of erosion, filtering sediments and some pollutants from the water, and providing a safe nursery for many species of coastal fish and shellfish.
Nearly half of New Jersey’s 245,000 acres of salt marsh is found along the Delaware Bay and the Atlantic coast of Cape May and Atlantic Counties. Salt marshes may appear as only waving acres of grass, but are in fact, a critical link in the coastal food chain – providing vital nutrients for crabs and other crustaceans, for nearly all of New Jersey’s coastal fish, and for huge flocks of shorebirds on their spring and fall migrations.
It featured carefully detailed drawings of local plants and animals, like the beautiful Marsh wren (Cistothorus palustris), the Snowy egret (Egretta thula) the annoying horse fly (Tabanus nigrovitatus) and the Northern diamondback terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin).
Speaking of terrapins, let’s go back to Baltimore, for a few more Queen songs. “Crazy Little Thing Called Love” The song was their first number-one single on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US in 1980, topping the charts for four weeks. It was atop the Australian charts for seven weeks. It peaked at number two in the UK Singles Chart in 1979.
Freddie Mercury said he wrote that in 10 minutes, while sitting in a bath. The band recorded it for an hour or six, depending on which version of the story you like. Either way, it still feels like a timeless tribute, and that isn’t bad for a day’s work.
“I Want to Break Free” was a moderate hit in the American charts, but it moved a lot of records. It was certified platinum in Denmark, Germany, Italy, double-platinum in the UK and it was a platinum single here, as well.
Aside from that rising guitar lick I never really cared for it. (But I did enjoy the disco ball used here.) There’s an extended version out there that runs seven minutes and 16 seconds, and I don’t know why that was though necessary.
We’ll wrap up the Queen videos this week, but there are still a few great songs to go, so be sure to come back tomorrow.
