A busy week is over, a slow and peaceful weekend has been ordered and is now en route. You can track the package through late Sunday night.
My contribution to the cause today was this. I produced one more video we’ll send out to new students in the next few weeks. That’s four of these videos in the last three days. Now the videos are being edited. The videos, I am happy to say, were left in capable hands.
I’ve had a student work on these. She’s quite talented and I’m pleased that she’s taken on the role of being the project editor. Now I can just give her a few notes and, later, all of the credit for this effort.
We were shooting here yesterday, care to guess?
(Click to embiggen.)
Otherwise, today was fall break for students. So, even though I was working, it was a relatively quiet day. Just what I ordered. (You bet I tracked that package.) I think, though, I’ve hit various different stages in the last three weeks.
The Yankee crashed on Sept. 22nd and a week later had surgery. It was that day, after a week of very little sleep, when real, determined exhaustion set in.
The next day, her mother arrived and a little sleep happened in that second week, which helped a bit. Her mother left after a week. We were fortunate to have her here. Spirits were lifted and I returned to something akin to the normal Merely Very Tired.
Her friend, Anne, came to help this week. That’s been huge. She has basically taken over running the dinner show. Her help with the big and little things where she’s cheerfully pitched in this week was a game changer. I don’t know how to properly express my gratitude when she heads home tomorrow.
My lovely bride has now firmly entered recovery mood. A good surgery, time, good bones, her fitness, beginning physical therapy and Anne willing it to happen has probably done that. She is on schedule, but it’s a slow recovery and it isn’t easy. On top of everything else, she’s also pretty tired. Every time she moves at night she wakes up.
As for me, my circadian rhythm is such that I’d almost rather stay up all night than have a night’s sleep punctuated and interrupted by waking up. We spent two weeks waking up for medicine and I still wake up hearing her move most of the time.
So, in the middle of this week, an incredible sort of fatigue set in. I guess three weeks is the current limit of my first-stage endurance. (This is after the regular day-to-day stress, her bike crash earlier this summer, two other surgeries within the last year, the pandemic and whatever else … )
I stopped protesting about having help with dinner and only meekly protested when she beat me to the dishes last night.
So, after a semi-demanding week — and it should be fairly said that my bosses have been sympathetic and understanding about all of this — I am looking forward to staring mutely at the maple tree.
I’m hoping that, next week, she can finally get a full night of rest. Four weeks removed from the last one, she’s surely due. I might be, too.
IU / photo — Comments Off on More things from a walk 13 Oct 22
This feels like the busiest week of the term, he thought with some trepidation, fearing that the thought alone would bring more in some not-too-distant week. This week, then, was perfectly neutral and doesn’t have any more, or less, work or stress than any other one before it, he tried, hoping to balance the karmic imbalances, but he knew it was a fib.
My contribution to the cause today was this. I shot and directed two promotional videos we’ll be releasing to incoming students sometime soon. One was in a darkened gym — couldn’t talk our way into getting the house lights brought up. It’s a straightforward monologue and we’re putting a lot of B-roll with it. The fun part, of course, was the creative challenge of finding making regular B-roll look intriguing and new. Another was a different monologue in a small room with the same concept. We’ll put B-roll with the presenter’s voiceover. Two of these in one day is plenty of a creative challenge for me.
Yesterday I directed another video. That one was a two-camera tracking shot that works through three rooms and lighting configurations. One guy talks for about 90 seconds.
I have one more of these to shoot, tomorrow.
The still ripening fruit from a sycamore tree. I think I took this one because everything is yellow.
But I took this one because, even though the leaves are yellow, the petiole is red.
I wanted to concentrate on the chokeberries — rich in pectin, so a fine candidate for tasty jams and jellies — but then I noticed the fine hairs, the trichomes on the leaves.
Look at the snout on this guy!
Here’s the nearby poke sallet. These berries are slightly toxic.
Seems odd to see a dandelion this late in the year, but that could just be me.
Weeds are only weeds if you don’t want them there. And if they flower, I sorta want to see them stay where they are.
How can this one little branch have berries of all of these different colors?
I forget why I took this photo, but now that I’ve stared at it trying to remember, I found that I sorta like the chaos of it anyway.
Some sort of cotton weed, ready to let go and spread seeds in an empty patch of land.
The fight for plant supremacy continues, no matter what happened in those videos I’m working on, no matter how warm or cool it is, or how tired or energetic you feel. There’s something comforting about that.
Unless these guys are trying to work their way onto your property.
Two trees, two species, two colors, one block. And this is peak autumn. Rain is coming on tomorrow and that means the leaves will go, the cold front behind it will settle in and blah, blah, blah.
It’ll be in the 50s next week. And soon after denial will give way to grim acceptance and the countdown to April will begin.
I need about two dozen different ways to say that, so I can return to this trope at least once a week between now and then.
My contribution to the cause today was this. Meetings. And preproduction meetings for videos I have to shoot this week. Also I spent some time on a quixotic search for a delivery that’s somewhere in the building, but nowhere in the building. The UPS note says “Desk.” Well, sir or ma’am, this is a school, and there are a lot of desks, and also offices. Each one of those have desks. I have checked them all, and the administrative desks, and unoccupied desks. And also the loading dock. Nothing.
We’re going to get caught up on the Re-Listening Project here. I’m filling space and time on the blog from an in-car project, where I’m working my way through all of my old CDs in chronological order. None of these are reviews, but sometimes there’s something fun, and at least the embedded music has potential. All of these discs (eventually) cross genres in a haphazard way and today is a slight example of that. There’s no larger theme here. It is, as I’ve been saying, a whimsy, as music should be. So fall back to the mid 1990s with me, won’t you.
I don’t understand the point of a sampler in the CD format. At this late date the process seems too slow. Loading a disc, playing that song or two, swapping it to something else if you don’t like the whole mix. And maybe that is informed by always preferring a full record.
Which makes me wonder why I have this, Loaded Volume 1. (I don’t think there was ever a Volume 2.) This is an EMI sampler, and I think I probably picked it up in a bunch, and likely for just one or two songs. But what an eclectic mix beyond the electronic, rock, pop and synth-pop.
I was never invested in this collection, so let’s explore the track by track listing.
EMF’s “Unbelievable.” Maybe I bought it for this song. I think I used this on a radio show for some reason in college. (Hey, it was 1996.)
D Generation’s “No Way Out.” I probably listened to this one more closely this week than I did back then.
It’s hard to imagine a time that Lenny Kravitz ever needed to have a single included on a sampler.
Radiohead’s “Creep” holds up remarkably well, even if they seldom play it live.
Here’s an interesting story about Jesus Jones and “The Devil You Know.” There is no interesting story about this song. I checked. This is a 1993 release, though, which is why it sounds like the perfect bridge between the 1980s and 1990s, from several decades removed.
Yeah, no idea why Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark is on this CD, especially in the all-important track six spot.
The song from Blur you knew before “Song 2.”
In 1993 Duran Duran did Unplugged and “The Wedding Album” which is as big a late-career comeback a pop band can ask for. And two years later, “Come Undone” was found here. There’s a lot of Duran Duran that is aging well, considering, and I am still wondering what’s going on at this point in this disc.
There’s a nice acoustic version of Tasmin Archer’s “Sleeping Satellite” up next. This was her 1992 debut, which went number one in the United Kingdom and Ireland and reached the top 20 in 13 other countries and peaked at number 32 on the US Billboard Hot 100.
Which sets us up nicely for Milla Jovovich’s “Gentleman Who Fell.” She looks 19 on her late night debut with Conan.
Then you get Sinead O’Connor’s “I Believe In You.” Say what you will, and heaven knows a lot has been said about O’Connor, but this song is amazing.
Then there’s … “Alleluia, Beatus Vir Qui Suffert” from The Benedictine Monks Of Santo Domingo De Silos.
Interesting story, this song was part of a series of recordings from the 1970s and 1980s. It didn’t sell. A different record label, an EMI imprint, re-released it in 1994. “Chant” became the best-selling album of Gregorian chant ever released. It peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, and was double platinum, two million copies sold in the United States, four million worldwide.
Then comes Shara Nelson, “What Silence Knows.” This is the title track from her debut album. This song was never released as a single, but that album was a substantial hit in the UK in 1993-1994.
And here’s a B-side from the critically important Jeffrey Gaines.
The last song is from The Specials, and I found myself wondering, while listening to “Ghost Town” the other day, if this was, in fact, the first ska song I ever heard.
Probably not, but maybe?
Anyway, should you buy this record? Do you like these songs? Will you be impressed to learn that the bonus track, not listed here, is the best song on the thing?
I’m not going to spoil that one, but if you think it is possible that, among the assembled great music above, the best song isn’t here, then maybe you should make a purchase. Here’s an incentive. The hidden track was 40 years old when this record was distributed. And it’s almost 30 years older even now.
There’s one more CD to discuss here, but it’s another one of those that was a cassette upgrade in my earliest days in the new medium. I found out about this band from some improbable late night live show. A few weeks later they were on SNL. And I’m not sure if it was days before that network appearance or in the days immediately after that I bought the debut record. It’s the first of four or six that will wind up in this project.
I was a high school freshman, listening to this too much. Way too much. Couldn’t wait to get home from school to put this on, too much. Started wondering what that meant, too much. Way too much. Nirvana didn’t interest me. I didn’t get Alice in Chains. Soundgarden and Stone Temple Pilots were coming my way soon. Pearl Jam was where all of it started. It meant a lot.
It meant adolescence and grunge music happened at about the same time, a ridiculous combination, and it means I’m mentally prepared if flannel and Doc Martens make a comeback. (Maybe they shouldn’t?)
“Ten,” for a 30-year-old debut, in a then-still developing genre, holds up remarkably well as a complete album. It was later that Pearl Jam would become something like The Doors.
Friday / iPhone / IU / photo — Comments Off on The shades beneath the shade 7 Oct 22
“I set out to the explore the world and never made it beyond my back yard.”
That, or something like that, I might be mis-paraphrasing by memory, was the signature file someone used in a photography Usenet that I once subscribed to. I’m not sure where the quote originated as of this writing, because none of the most likely variations brings up the original. But it strikes me, today, as a sentiment I probably didn’t understand then, but appreciate a little better today. Particularly after these few minutes in the back yard this evening.
The woods are starting to get their autumnal glow.
Closer to the ground, the Joe Pye weed is doing it’s thing.
Three different versions of the same weed within two steps of one another.
Everything out here looks tired. Tired of the summer, or already tired of fall, who can say?
Right about the time I noticed the pink smartweed, I started kicking myself for not bringing a macro lens outside.
Let’s check on the maple.
It seems like all the green leaves are facing south. I wonder why that is. I do enjoy the red petiole on that tree, though.
Oh, look, the sun is peaking through.
My contribution to the cause today was this. I supervised the production of four TV shows. I supported two live events. I had two production meetings and four other less eventful meetings.
That was enough. I now feel I can stride into the weekend with a good conscience.
This, the Twitter thread below, is an extremely true story. I took a nap this evening and have basically gotten back to the point of feeling like normal again. Can’t imagine how she feels, but she’s got the medication! And she can take naps if she feels like it.
I would like to note that while I do appreciate the effort, @kennysmith has literally not had a full, unbroken night’s sleep since I crashed. He’s gotten up to help me, or get meds from me.
I’d say she’s lucky, but I’ve seen the X-rays. I know exactly how lucky she is.
Spent most of yesterday at the office telling people about it, I think. Word gets around. Maybe in a day or two I’ll be back up to full speed, and feeling like it, too!
Let’s wrap up the Poplars Building talk. You’ll remember it was a hotel, and then dorms, and finally some administrative space. The whole building is gone now. They torn down the first half during late August and September. They took the other half last week. But the remnants are still there.
Eventually this will become a green space. I take that to mean they don’t know, yet, what they want to go in that space, but some plan will come along one day.
We should catch up on the Re-Listening Project. If that sounds official, it isn’t. I am working through all of my old CDs in the car. Easy content and, sometimes, good music. These aren’t reviews, mostly just the memories that mark the time.
This is strictly chronological, which is to say the order in which I bought all of these things. My discs cross genres and periods in a haphazard way and there’s no large theme. It is, a whimsy as music should be.
“Deluxe” was Better Than Ezra’s major label debut, and I bought this first as a cassette. “Good,” which they still do on stage as “The one you remember” was released in February of 1995, and I bought it sometime around there. Obviously I thought enough about it to purchase it a second time, as a CD.
I remember playing the tape version almost continuously on a three-hour solo road trip to see a friend.
First of all, no one remembers that Salma Hayek was in the video for the third single off this record.
Her career, in American media anyway, was just about to take off. This was sublimely timed casting that wouldn’t have been possible even a few months later.
Secondly, I have this weird flash of a memory of listening to this record in an Arby’s drive thru. Maybe that was the beginning of that road trip.
It’s a deep cut, but Summerhouse still holds up.
This, along with Rosealia, was one of my favorite songs of the record.
A few years later I was shooting pool in a restaurant — that no longer exists — when a friend came out of the closet to me and the guy playing his guitar in the corner was covering that song. I was the first person she told, she said. She figured I was from the big city, and that I’d understand. But I knew already. And whole, larger story, is an incredibly sharp memory.
