I mentioned Colin Hay on Twitter last night, since you asked. I really fell into Hay’s music again around 2000 or so, and then again off and on since. For a while, I’ve been trying to describe it. If there is an overriding sentiment, what would it be? I’ve settled on midlife, convertible, late-afternoon sun.
The prologue in that particular live performance is his getting dropped by his record label after Men at Work. He released the album carrying that song in his mid-40s, so it makes sense.
The debates? Twitter had a big night. Remember when the media scoffed at Twitter? I love that all the big national folks fall all over themselves to report about it now. I bet we’ll find that this was one of the biggest nights yet for the microblogger.
Our regular critique of The Crimson was moved to this afternoon. Here is a big stack of newspapers:
We had four pages in color. It was a 12-page paper today. We went through every one of those issues, just to see if we could find the typos in the same places in each copy. We did.
(Find the same errors. We did not go through every issue. We are thorough, but we have other responsibilities, too.)
And now, a few pictures. This is meant to reflect a full day of newspaper topics, email, meetings, text messages, library time and cleaning my office and is in no way designed to get us over 100 photos for the month. That is purely a happy coincidence.
This is the Davis Library at Samford. I visit there from time to time to enjoy the plush leather seats and the many books they have. And also access to scholarly topics. Yesterday I read through about 30 papers in here:
Here’s a side view. Every so often I catch the perfect moment of the afternoon. The sun is at this precise moment realizing it is no longer high and suddenly sinks far more rapidly. But first it sets that window on fire:
And, just a moment or two later, now looking to the west, here is the view of Hodges Chapel, with vinyl canopies going up for some Friday function:
Samford does have a beautiful campus. I took these shots while playing with Picle. Audio! Video! On the iPhone! Together! With no editing-in-post! Drag and drop! And then I learned Picle doesn’t let you embed. That would be an oversight, guys. Embedding is important.
Anyway, here are a few quad shots taken while the carillon was playing the afternoon concert.
Lucky to go to work there.
Video of the carillon? Sure. I shot this in April:
Steve Knight, an amazing man, is the carillonneur.
A new photo found its way onto my Tumblr. And, of course, plenty more ramblings on Twitter.
The regular Sunday post that slaps together a bunch of pictures among my many other featured treasures of the Internet. Showing them off with trite commentary constitutes cheap content. Off we go …
Did you know there’s a Hank Williams museum in downtown Montgomery, Ala? He’s buried not far from there, so it makes sense. I just found this museum on the Fourth of July, though. It was closed, but you could see this hand-carved Kaw-Liga piece from the door.
Kaw-Liga, you see, was a wooden Indian who fell in love with an Indian maid at a nearby antique store. He does not, as the song explain, share his feeling, because he’s from a pine tree. Classic tune, and this piece took 530 collective hours to carve:
On the way to the beach last weekend we saw signs for another Hank Williams museum. I can’t comment on the quality of either, unfortunately, but I want to visit them both.
Parasailing tourists on the Gulf of Mexico, off Orange Beach, Ala.:
Mr. Brown, our weekend host, is catching fish on his condo’s private pier on Orange Beach, Ala.:
Brian photographs the pelicans on the state pier in Orange Beach, Ala.:
Allie, playing in her tunnel this weekend:
The Yankee celebrating her first state line in cycling:
Monday / music / video — Comments Off on I’m reading and thinking, so … 2 Jul 12
I am glad there are people like this in the world. The world needs people who find art in essentially simple engineering. There’s a place for people who find conversations in circles. I’m just glad I’m not that person.
Wheels get me there. Safely. Comfortably. Just get me there.
It makes you wonder how the brain perceives art. Why do you see it farther down this chain of events and activities than the next person? There’s a talent and an art to growing things. There’s a great spirit involved in planting a seed and nurturing what comes next. A different person takes that freshly grown potato and thinks: french fries. Now there’s a culinary art I can salt and get behind.
You can think of any analogy you like and make it apply here. I’ll stick with a simplified explanation. Anything you do with joy can be art — I made pizzas in high school, and that wasn’t art, but there was a guy there who did it with flair. When it becomes rote, then you’ve done it too long. I like to watch the guys at Mellow Mushroom spin out the pretzels. To them this is a crank of wrist and a bend of the elbow, a few hundred times a night. Don’t spill it and don’t back up the kitchen. Just get it there safely and comfortably.
I’m not a very good cyclist — have you heard? — but I do try and make sure there’s a smile on my face. Otherwise, what is the point? You get in the upper 20s and there’s so much wind it always sounds like there’s a car behind you, you better look the part because, eventually, that will be a car and not wind noise. A truck turned right in front of me the other day, almost hitting me, and then behaved rather stupidly in front of me for some time. It is unnerving, but you must remember to smile. That guy could be having a really bad day. There could be a terrifying spider in his lap as far as I know. Also his truck weighs more than my bike, and he cares not for the philosophical or ontological designs behind the wheels’ origin.
Someone will write to say that the absence of appreciation is a lack of depth of thought. True. Usually I’m more concerned with breathing and lactic acid in my legs. And I’ve seen wheels my entire life. Perhaps if I’d been around at the beginning for those first stone wheels I would have made drawings on my wall about them.
We’d talk about it later, but I’d act casually about the wonders of what I’d seen and preserved in plant dye.
“Grog! Look! I have portrayed Grimmel’s wheel. See how it slides down the hill? He should try it on the skinny side. But his flipping regimen is doing wonders for his core.”
At what point, really, do you think people began to look at the wheel as more than a simple tool that made chores remarkably easier? The Renaissance? The Bronze Age? The first kid that had a wheeled toy? Wikipedia says that was perhaps around 1500 BC and — I’m guess from the citation here — in Mexico. Imagine that, a kid who looks at what someone carved him and comes to the realization that he has, as a toy, what someone in the village doesn’t have as a tool.
But he didn’t write sonnets about it.
And now, 100 guitar riffs we should beam to outer space on a universal disc of greetings along with our periodic chart and anatomical cliff notes. Here is something of a history of rock ‘n’ roll, without the obligatory guitar faces:
That really needs Joe Satriani and Alex Lifeson, but you can’t have everything. Artists.
Tonight the city held the annual Summer Art Walk. They closed the main intersection downtown, shunted traffic from all four directions and let vendors put tables in the streets. They built a small riser stage in the intersection for music. Stores stayed open a bit later hoping for a little more revenue. The weather was perfect and a nice crowd came out for a relaxed evening.
We walked by Samford Hall on the way to the party. Beautiful as ever:
Kids were just rolling around in the road. An entire block on one side had given way to a chalk explosion:
Kids of all ages:
We enticed friends to come out. Jeremy brought his oldest daughter. We ran into the famous Sara “War Eagle” Willis. We met some of her friends, a graphic design graduate and others. We had lemonade. We played behind the trees at Toomer’s:
Local band Muse, who have been jamming here for almost 40 years, played a nice long set at Center Paw. Kids danced. College kids had a sit-in. The old people, milled about visiting and shopping.
