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28
Sep 23

Things that stick on you

I heard my alarm, both times this morning. And I pulled up the cover and closed my eyes tight and smiled and stayed halfway-conscious because I had to get up and get ready for the day. Then my lovely bride came back into the room and touched my shoulder. She said “You need to get up.”

I did need to get up. I needed to get up about 75 minutes prior to that, but that’s OK, because the day starts late so I’m not behind, except that mentally I am. When you set an alarm and overshoot it, that sensation can stick with you. For me, it is on my mind for the rest of the day. No matter how accomplished, how full or how complete the schedule, it’s just sitting there: You were late, and so you are late. It clings.

I had an apple and some peanut butter for breakfast*. I got ready to head to campus. And then the cat escaped through the laundry room and into the garage. He then goes under a car and just sits there, feeling like he’s achieved a great deal, I assume.

We’d even made it into the garage on time this morning — this is often my fault — but now the cat kept us from getting into the car on time because he is an ordeal.

But we made it to campus on time, fortunately. And it was only marginally my fault this time that we felt pressed for time.

I stood in the hallway and talked with two of my students while the class taking place in our room wrapped up. Eventually they all filed out, an entirely predictable and uneventful arrangement, and we walked in. Over the course of the next several minutes a dozen more students came in. Today we reviewed their first video assignments. The work concentrated on asking them to achieve certain camera shots and motions. You are put with a partner, who is your video subject, and you show the basics. Some people keep this simple. “My subject is just standing there, and this is a low angle. Here is a shot of my subject from a high angle,” and so on. This gets the job done. One group got very involved, overly so, and tried to create something of a narrative. Kudos for originality, though it doesn’t figure into this grade. One of my favorites video sequences came from two women who clearly enjoyed this way too much. There was a lot of acting, the best unselfconscious, purely hammy, scene chewing kind. They were delightful. I also had three slide decks to work through with them. I managed to work through two of those and the class still went long.

On Thursdays I teach two sections of the same class, back-to-back, in the same room. There’s only a 15-minute break between them, at about 3:15, and that’s lunch. But if I go long, that sneaks into my lunch time. So I had a handful of grapes* while the second class filtered into the room.

Fortunately, the two classes are in synch, so the second section feels like a second try, albeit with a group of an entirely different personality. We reviewed the shots from their first video assignment, as well. And one of the best parts are the shots when someone chooses an extreme closeup. I will play those clips over and over until I can get the class to talk about the emotions they’re seeing in the shots. Getting them going is the key to the whole puzzle, I think. I had three slide decks for the second class as well. I got through all three. We finished with 10 minutes to spare.

I’m not sure how that happened, but I have a few guesses.

After that, it was email, and staring at this pile of things to grade, and then we hopped in the car and drove back to the house. Thursdays are busy, then, and everything piles up. Email, the things to grade, the daily dose of news, whatever else you’re doing. And that 20 minute drive always feels a bit off when you’re aware of all of those things you’d like to get done tonight, or at least started.

Being behind is purely a mental construct, one that should have little to no power, but somehow it can hold a lot of sway over you, draped right over your shoulders, trying to hold you down. So you start ticking things off the list. What else could you do, anyway?

*I had a delicious and full dinner.

Let’s take a quick look at the Re-Listening project, where I am playing all of my old CDs in the car, in the order in which I acquired them. After this entry I’ll only be three discs behind!

Josh Joplin Group’s “Useful Music” was already an artifact by the time I picked it up at a used record shop. They’d originally released it in 1999 as Josh Joplin Band under the SMG Records label, and then again, with some new members, in 2001 by way of Artemis Records under their final name, Josh Joplin Group. (Big shakeups in nomenclature were an artistic signature around the turn of the century, you see.) This was Joplin’s sixth record, and so he was to become a nine-year overnight success.

It’s a radio friendly record, but didn’t get a lot of commercial support. Despite that, “Useful Music” hit number 22 on the Billboard Independent Albums chart. Three singles were rolled off, including the moderately successful, and altogether enjoyable, “Camera One.”

Odds are, if you ran across this Atlanta-based band, this was your first exposure. It quickly scooted to the top spot of the Triple A chart, which, at that time, was the most successful independent release ever. Soon after, that song was featured in an episode of Scrubs.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen that video, though. He looks like an angry singer, which is a shame for what was ultimately an incredible AOR friendly record.

If you picked up this disc because you heard that song on the radio, this was the first track you heard when you loaded it in your player.

The second single got a lot of spins on what still passed for alt radio in the summer of 2001. And we were still referencing it this summer, which is pretty great good for a pop tune.

This is a perfectly little encapsulated post-grunge pop song, if you ask me. It is one of several songs on here I never really gave it’s due when I was listening to this a lot.

But then there’s this, which should have never been attempted. Nevertheless, it’s catchy in ways that defy convention. I was on a long straight country road on a sunny day when I heard this recently, and it stuck with me for days.

They released one more single, in December of 2001. And on the re-release, which is the disc I have, there’s an alternate version of the song featuring some new instrumentation and an orchestral accompaniment. And it changes the song, except for all of the places where it doesn’t. It was, and remains, intriguing. The thing is, I listen to this so rarely that I forget that this track closes the record, and so it’s a pleasant surprise almost every time.

The Wikipedia page tells me the Josh Joplin Group disbanded in 2002, which was before I picked this up (I’m contextually assuming I got this in the summer or fall of 2003) but that live performance above was from 2019. All told, Joplin has released 11 albums, most recently with the band Among the Oak & Ash, which also featured the great Garrison Starr. Here’s the newest thing he’s published on his YouTube channel, just four months ago.

It’s always nice to see people continuing to do what they love.

Like this grading I have to do now, for example.

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25
Sep 23

Thanks, now leave, Ophelia

Three days in a row of rain and gray. It might have been more gray than rain. Hard to say. About even, maybe? Sometimes you couldn’t distinguish between the two. And another day of it tomorrow. Thank you, subtropical storm system for promising four days in a row.

We didn’t even get the big winds.

At least we didn’t get the big winds.

I did get this, however. When it rains more than enough, the place where our driveway and the road meets will puddle. And, on Saturday, I watched it puddle, and disappear. Puddle. Disappear. By the third time I was ready to find my raincoat and see if I could understand how this was happening. The disappearance wasn’t bad, but there was no way it rained enough after the disappearances to mean puddles that big once again. This was, then, a hydrological, geological, sedimentological mystery.

Where was the rain going? And where were the puddles coming back from? I sat in my office window for a while watching this, trying to figure it out. Trying to decide if it would look crazy to go outside in the remnants of a tropical almost storm and just stare at a puddle. Couldn’t I just stare it from the window? Where I was warm and dry? I was staring at it. That was strange enough, right? I’d already inspected the basement twice, surely this is a strain of thoroughness beyond what is necess —

And then the wind blew.

Turns out that when the wind blows from the west south west at just the right velocity, the puddle takes on the same appearance of the chip and seal road from 35 yards away.

To be fair to myself, I was staring through double-paned windows.

Since the weather was the weather, I didn’t go anywhere. (We had a big fund raising bike ride planned for Saturday, but the weather canceled that. The right choice, I’d say.) That just means more time with the cats, and your favorite weekly feature. (Another correct choice.)

Phoebe discovered, or rediscovered, my backup clothes basket. She likes it very much.

What? You don’t have a backup clothes basket? Get with the times.

Anyway, here’s Phoebe again, on her ledge. And she’s not judging you and your clothes basket choices, not at all.

Poseidon … he’s definitely judging you. He needs more things to jump in and he thinks this is your fault. (Yes, they are related.)

Fortunately for you, Poseidon is a forgiving creature, and this box will do.

Inside the box was a gift. It was not for him, but rather for me, but the cat also won.

We went to an event for my godsister-in-law (just go with it) on Friday night. It was a backyard thing. Cookout. Nice people. A two-person band played. They had an amazing light show.

My lovely bride and her godsisters have been making this pyramid photo their whole lives. When that sunset started to showoff they figured they would, too.

I’m the second photographer, and that was in between moments, and one of several I took trying to not get in the way of the official zapper. But I like the authentic smiles.

My godsister-in-law’s husband (so my godbrother-in-law-in-law?) is friends with the band. I think they all went to school together. The Jollies, the two guys playing and singing have known each other their whole lives, I’m told, and they have a nice tight little sound. They played a Pete Yorn cover. It was so random it took a moment to register. But it was really quite good.

I ran into the two of them during a set break and complimented them for the choice. “Not everyone plays Pete Yorn covers,” I said, “but they should.” The guy did not miss a beat, that sorta response you know he’s waiting for because he’s pulled this out before and it works. He says, We play that for people like you.

And then he told me about another Yorn cover they sometimes do. Like it was a test, or something. But I, too, have “Musicforthemorningafter.” It’ll show up on the site eventually.

The Jollies, though, great light show.

And then it rained Saturday. And it rained Sunday. It was gray today. I had two meetings this afternoon and class this evening. We talked about Marshall McLuhan and Ibram Kendi. We talked about them in class, I mean. In the meetings we discussed fire codes and e-sports and documentaries.

On the way home I decided to try the drive with no map. This was my ninth time on this campus, after all, and the sixth time I’d driven myself. You have to try sometime. Why not try on just the third time you’ve done it at night.

Between here and there, there are two tricky intersections. As in poorly designed intersections. One sneaks up on you the first time, but you don’t forget it. Though I had a bit of difficulty judging the lanes in the dark. So I rounded a building, but I knew where I was. The second is a country intersection where five roads improbably run into one another. You could take two spurs and get back to the comforts of home, and I’m pretty sure the map has told me to take them both on different trips. I took the longer one this evening. The road didn’t run out where I expected — which is a big question mark since we’re talking cornfields and nondescript side roads at night — but I did find I was on a road I knew from my bike rides, meaning I knew a route back. (It was just around the corner from me.) And that’s fine, except everything happens at a slightly different speed in the car, of course. You must remember that that longer bit is now shorter, and you probably just weaved around that pothole when you were on two wheels. But, before long, hey, there’s another right turn you know and you’re pointed exactly in the right direction.

The only problem with learning the roads by bike is that I almost always take the long way when I’m pedaling.

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21
Sep 23

Starts, and ends, all classy-like

I was very classy today, which is to say I was full of class. Which is to say I was in class all day. If six hours is close enough to “all day” for you.

It was close enough for me.

It was a fun class, we discussed shot compositions and camera movements. I did this twice in different classes. And then I set the eager young people out to shoot video of some things. Next week we’ll look at all of their work, and then the class will get just a bit more technical.

My lovely bride had an afternoon full of classes, as well, similar schedule, but in a different building. So we share the Thursday drive, and this evening we had a nice sunset.

I have to grade some things for a while, so please take in the grandeur of this photograph. I call it “A Meditation On Being Near Corn.” It is a profound statement on how we let the world beyond us impact us, and the ways that, perhaps, it should and should not. It is a commentary on the environment closer to you, and the passage of time you might not see up close if you look too far afield.

It’s certainly provocative, no? I thought so, too. I hope you enjoyed that while I finished today’s grading. I got all of that in just after dinner, and now I can take a day or so and re-calibrate the ol’ noggin for a different sort of class on Monday. We won’t be talking about camera motion, but McLuhan, not composition but Kendi. I’m sure it will be a lot of fun.

We’re back to the Re-Listening project, and my trip back in time is going even farther back in time. I’m listening to all of my old CDs in the car, as you might know, and I am doing so in the order in which I acquired them. From what’s surrounding them in this particular CD book, I know we are somewhere between June of 2003 and February of 2004. What we’re looking at today, however, is older still. The product of visiting a used record store or two.

Why buy things when they are released, after all, when you can wait 10 year or so and get them much, much cheaper, when you the songs you liked might feel fresh again, or you won’t mind if you pick up something and only really like the single?

And that’s exactly what we’re dealing with here, 1991’s “Pocket Full of Kryptonite” got so out of hand that the band came to resent it for a while. They organically sold some 60,000 copies before radio ever put it on the air, but then “Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong” and “Two Princes” went to the top spot of the Billboard Heatseekers chart, and number three on the Billboard 200 charts. Those singles helped the record go platinum five times in the U.S. Everything got a little crazy for a while somewhere in there. Chris Barron, the Spin Doctors’ lead singer, said it got to the point where he couldn’t go to the mall to buy new socks without being swarmed by people.

And despite all of that air play and success, “Pocket Full of Kryptonite” still finished 1993 ranked number seven on the end of year Billboard 200. (Incidentally, I wrote about their third album, “You’ve Got To Believe in Something,” last year.)

How, you might ask yourself, could six other records have landed higher than that one? And what, you might naturally continue, were they? So glad you asked.

1. Whitney Houston – The Bodyguard
2. Kenny G – Breathless
3. Eric Clapton – Unplugged
4. Janet Jackson – Janet.
5. Billy Ray Cyrus – Some Gave All
6. Dr. Dre – The Chronic
7. Spin Doctors – Pocket Full of Kryptonite
8. Pearl Jam – Ten
9. Garth Brooks – The Chase
10. Stone Temple Pilots – Core

You did ask, didn’t you?

I suppose you could say it most years with the lever of time as perspective, but if you peer into that top 10 long enough, you can almost see an event horizon of our most mainstream music. Cyrus was the last male country singer, aside from Brooks, to finish a year in the top 10 of record sales for a decade. Shania Twain and The Dixie Chicks show up a few times. Rap and hip hop, having become hugely successful genres already, were clearly in an ascendancy. Janet Jackson and Whitney Houston held the door open, too. Women — solo artists, groups or groups fronted by women — would occupy almost 40 of the top spots over the coming decade.

But I digress.

“Pocket Full of Kryptonite” comes from a lyric found in the first track, “Jimmy Olsen’s Blues.” And here’s the band playing that song, via Zoom, in 2020.

And though we’re shunning the smash hits, there was a surprisingly poignant ballad that they released late in the album’s first life cycle. And dig that classic early 1990s music video style.

Spin Doctors were a jam band that enjoyed some monstrous pop success. And there’s no greater indicator than the last track, a 12-minute almost-epic that also features John Popper.

In 2011 they released a two-disc anniversary edition, marking 20 years since their debut record. And they’re touring the United States right now. It’s been a decade since they last recorded a record, but their fans still come out.

The next album up in the Re-Listening Project is another used store find. I probably paid two or three bucks for it, thinking the single was worth it. It was and is, though the rest of Jon Secada’s “Heart, Soul & a Voice” doesn’t do much for me. It was his second English-language record, it went platinum largely on the strength of “If You Go.” The song holds up, the video feels a compelling 1994 argument for the silliness of music videos as a genre.

It peaked at number 10 on the US Billboard Hot 100, Secada’s last top-10 single in the U.S. This track topped the charts in Canada. He released “Si Te Vas,” that same year, most of the same songs as this record, in Spanish. So these were his third and fourth records. He’s put out 15 records, all told, the most recent in 2017. He’s sold 20 million records, has three Grammy awards and worked Broadway and is a noted humanitarian. He’s doing the occasional “intimate evening” venues lately. Pretty great career.

And that’s a good place to finish the day.

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20
Sep 23

Of bricks and cannons

It was just 26 miles. No big deal.

This morning’s bike ride was in no way remarkable. No big speeds, no new PRs, no new roads, but the weather was perfect and the colors of this mini season are dazzling.

It was only remarkable in its unremarkableness. The ability, and the opportunity, to set off for a mid-morning bike ride is not to be underappreciated. I mean, I was still working out some lecture material in my head as I rode — because that never turns off, not really, apparently — but it was a wonderful day for a bike ride, and I was happy we could take advantage of it.

After which I, of course, sat down and went over notes and prepped my slides and figured out how to pace some things out for classes tomorrow.

Then I took a break. I pulled in some tomatoes. I tied up a few tomato vines that have been running wild all summer. I enjoyed a few tomatoes. (They were delicious.) Somehow, this kept work out of my noggin for a bit.

Oh, and then there was the evening’s ironing session. Nothing was percolating in my brain during my de-wrinkling chores.

But now I am back to it. So while I spend doing some class work, please enjoy these videos from Tuesday night’s concert with Pink.

Her daughter, Willow, came out to sing. Pretty great in front of a big crowd.

And here’s the big finish. The stage was in center field of the park, and they had a rigging set in the infield and then some more mounted somewhere above and behind everyone, which allowed all of this fanciness to happen.

It was a good show, though it wouldn’t have been my first choice, but I’m glad I went. The wire act and the aerials and the trampolines were all fun enough; I would have liked to seen more of the act without the over-the-top performance, to see how good it could be. Though I don’t think anyone there minded what they saw from the summer carnival.

Time now for the eighth installment of We Learn Wednesdays, where I ride my bike to find all of the local historical markers. I’m seeking them out by bike because it’s a great way to go a little slower, see more things and learn some roads I wouldn’t otherwise try. Counting today’s discoveries I have now visited 17 of the 115 markers found in the Historical Marker Database.

To find our first location you had to go down a quiet country road, and then turn onto an even more quiet country road. Every little click and noise you could make sounded like an interruption of nature. And then, you round a little curve and you find yourself at the Dickinson House.

The Marker wasn’t up the day I visited, but the database tells us what it said.

Dickinson House – The most ornate of early glazed brick patterns decorate the west wall of this house, built in 1754 by John Dickinson

It’s a one-of-a-kind pre-Revolutionary War-era home, then, and it is still a home today. This is what makes the place singular. This county was the home of patterned brick houses, a style you didn’t find in great numbers or intricacy anywhere else in America. There are about 20 of them that survive (they numbered 43 at the end of the 18th century).

Those bricks get that distinctive color by a firing process akin to vitirification. Extreme heat turns them from red to shiny blue. Usually, you’ll apparently see them installed as dates or initials, but the intricate designs here are something special. The owner thinks that this wall was an advertisement for the builder, John Dickinson. The letters are the initials of the Dickinsons, the original owners.

The house has four fireplaces. One of the original hearths is apparently at the state museum.

About seven miles away on the modern roads, you can see the Pole Tavern Cannon. The marker has been removed, but it said …

The Cannon Il Lugano which was forged in Naples in 1763 weighs 800 Pounds. Il Lugano was used in battle against the Austrians. Napoleon who visited Italy once in 1796 and again in 1800 dragged the cannon over the Alps and Eventually back to France. Napoleon then sent the cannon to his brother Joseph who was the ruler of Spain. In 1808 the Duke of Wellington’s Troops captured the cannon from Joseph and returned it to England. It was then used in Canada during the war of 1812 when American colonists captured it in 1814 in Plattsburg, New York. After the war was over the cannon was declared surplus by the United States Government, and sold to Salem County to Supply the county militia. During the Civil War (1861-1865) the cannon was used by the Pole Tavern Militia in preparation for battle. Since 1913 the cannon has been in the Pole Tavern Area.

The Cannon was restored in 1986 by Jay Williams and David Harvey with tremendous pride in their accomplishment.

This building was constructed in 1994 by Nicholas Hutchinson and fellow Scouts, to house and protect this historic cannon. Nicolas chose this project as a requirement to achieve Eagle Scout which he proudly received in 1995.

The canon, which has city in this small town’s main intersection for ages, was bought by that local militia along with three others, and 287 muskets.

Napoleon, since he’s mentioned by the marker, had also been fighting the British, of course, but he’d abdicated earlier that same year. That allowed more experienced British fighters to be shipped to the new world, and some of the key officers, too. But the Battle of Plattsburg, in August and September of 1814, when the cannon finally fell into American hands in 1814, becomes an important moment in the War of 1812. A combined land and naval engagement, it brought to an end the invasion of the northern states by the British, when the New Yorkers and Vermont men held Lake Champlain. (Having sat out much of the conflict, Vermont came into the fight here was a key piece of the timing.) The British commander knew he would be cut off from re-supply without the lake, so he ordered a retreat to Canada. They were to destroy everything they couldn’t haul back with them, a standard tactic, but there was no follow through. The British left under cover of darkness and, somewhere in all of that, Il Lugano was captured once again.

Three months later the peace treaty was signed, though that battle probably didn’t influence the mood among the delegates at those meetings in United Netherlands.

In May of 1889, veterans from another small town came up and stole the cannon for their Independence Day celebrations. The cannon then somehow wound up in the state capital, where it stayed for almost a quarter of a century, before finding it’s way back to its current location. It was displayed in the town hall, but that building burned soon after, in 1914. So the cannon, apparently, was outside for several decades. That (really great) little building that houses it is almost 30 years old, and is showing its own age.

You might think that the good people of that little town are proud to watch their cannon grow older each year — 270 years old this time around the sun! — but they trot it out now and then. They did so in 2016, when they fired it as part of a festival and parade. I found two different clips, but neither have audio. So I found something better: the time Il Lugano was heard in 1991.

If they keep to that schedule the Pole Tavern Cannon will be about 288 when it roars again.

Miss some of the markers? You can see them all right here.

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19
Sep 23

Went to a variety show and a concert broke out

Did some work this morning, enjoyed a lovely mild afternoon outside. This evening we crossed the river once more, this time, on a different bridge.

For on the other side of the river, was a big pop music show. Brandi Carlile, who can musically do no wrong, opened the show at the baseball park.

We’re sitting over third base, watching a musician with 25 Grammy nominations and nine Grammy awards, talk about how they’re just a bar band, and they can’t believe their in this great big place. And then, for about 45 minutes, she changed the name of Citizen’s Bank Park to Whatever Brandi Wants To Call It.

That’s “The Story,” from her second album, the one that broke her into a wide audience in a rather storybook sort of way. And she’s somehow better live than she is recorded-in-studio.

Then Pink came on, and promptly renamed the place again. She’s the headliner, and she’s every bit a star, of course. And this was a good show, as you’d imagine. There was also a little Sinead O’Connor interlude.

I wondered how this inevitable duet would come off. Nate Reuss isn’t just following Pink around, of course. But through the miracles of modern technology …

That song sat atop four American Billboard charts, and sat atop 19 other charts, international. It finished in the top seven of four domestic charts for 2013.

How is it a decade old, already, though?

This was a fun show, even though it isn’t one I would have picked for myself. But this whole circus is touring North American through mid-November. If you like Pink, you’ll love it.

Late night, longish, lovely, day. More tomorrow, when we’ll see two more videos from the concert.