Welcome back to the weekly installment of extra pictures. It cleans out the files. It gives me content, of a sort.
On with it, then. Still life tomato. We have so many tomatoes around here. We get them in our weekly veggie basket from a store we visit. Some nice people we know brought us some more. They’re just piling up, like every other healthy food here. We are eating so well these days. Only I can’t eat these things fast enough. Life is hard, I know.
If you were wondering about that ladder the other day, yes, I only showed you the top. I like the rail and the sliding and reaching for far, out of reach books. I like the notion of getting lost, leaning on that ladder, in some old passage I’d forgotten about.
I didn’t show you the middle of the ladder because ladders are ladders are horizontal lumber. Here’s the bottom, though:
This is the balcony view at the J&M store on South College. Pretty casual today, but the students come back soon. It’ll pick up.
We developed a theory in undergrad that you could identify people’s age by the name to which they referred to the places that were always in flux. This place, to me, is Lil Ireland’s and, on the left, Ultravox, around the corner. It isn’t Blue’s or Sky Bar or any other place. This is Lil Ireland’s. By the time I was a senior Ultravox had changed hands so many times no one but the townies recalled that name.
I wish the old movie theater was still on this lot, though. The era of downtown theaters is one I’d like to experience, but I missed it by a few years.
I’m sending this picture and telling people they’re tearing it down. They’re rebuilding the brick facade, a nice job for August, I’m sure.
I overdid it today. I am careful not to do things my body won’t let me, mind you, but the repetition did me in today. There were things to do, you see, things that needed to get done. Household work, if you must know, Copper. The Yankee was doing a great deal of it. I’m limited with my bum shoulder, that’s my alibi, Slim. I don’t like not being able to do things, though. And I like less watching someone else do it, even with an injury that limits me. Do you know what I mean?
At one point she told me “You’re done.” But I wasn’t, you see. I had, in my mind, already drawn the stopping point, and it was about 20 minutes beyond that moment. And so I did it, the extra 20 minutes. Now I’ve come to ache because of it. Maybe I was done when she said so. Perhaps earlier. It doesn’t really matter.
I hurt.
So, tomorrow, I’m taking it easy.
But we got almost everything done. None of it more exciting than household work. But at least the things were ticked off of the day’s list. I have the satisfaction of that and a large ice pack on my collarbone.
I’ll leave you with this:
That’s from the 1903 Glomerata (the Auburn University yearbook). It arrived today. I picked it up on e-bay for $20. A steal, for a sixth volume, despite a few missing pages. This book is 109 years old. Everyone in it is dust. Some of the buildings are still with us. There are tantalizing things in this book, which we’ll dive into one day. But, just read that ad again.
Don’t drink. But if you will …
The temperance movement was in full swing, or headed there, in the South in those days. In 1908 four counties were wet. People in the movement could easily count how many counties, otherwise, had between one and four bars. And so this guy wanted you to avoid the sauce. But, should you need to know, he had the sauciest stuff around.
I love that phone number, too: 59. We note the old ads all the time and think: Surely there were more than 59 phones in town by then. But in 1900 Opelika only had 4,245 people. The first phones apparently came to the state 20 years before, but wouldn’t this technology still be elusive in poor, rural areas? In 1919 there were all of 650 cars in the entire county. Sure the phone number 59, in 1903 was part of an exchange much larger than one small town.
But wouldn’t you like to have that number today? Every now and then someone that knows too much about cell phone prefix systems is amazed at my old number, but it has seven digits. Fifty-nine? I’d just make that the business card.
G.P Butler would be named a judge a few years later — before Prohibition. No word on if his store stayed open. Around that time Lee County built a brand new and modern jail, in 1914, according to a statewide prison report. Butler served two meals a day. You woke up and ate, had dinner in the mid-day. Then you waited from 1 p.m. until the next morning for more food.
Back then prison food was probably even worse than today.
He also fed the residents of the local pauper home, at least once, for Christmas in 1922. If you will eat …
That story was published last year in one of the local weeklies. It is a collection of details about the Poor Farm. Times were tough. “The people who lived there worked on the farm if they were able to work. They planted, tilled and harvested the crops, then cooks prepared the meals.” I wonder how that’d go over today. (Not very.)
Anyway. Butler served as probate until he died in 1933, but that genealogy page doesn’t give the date. Did he outlive Prohibition? It was killed the same year.
And what was his phone number when he died thirty years later? Sixty?
photo / weekend — Comments Off on Catching up 29 Jul 12
I write this every so often, but my favorite part of the day in our home is that time where we get the last little bit of real sunlight:
A picture never captures it though. There’s too much warmth in those few precious moments of golden light. There’s too much movement in the shadows cast by the trees and the blinds. And there are just enough trees to the west to make the light dance.
This is disappointing. I put a wind chime just under the air conditioner vent. If it gets moved by the air, I thought, I’ll have great music all through August. (The air has to run pretty continuously from here on in.
But the breeze didn’t budge the chime an inch. No tinkle, no dinkle.
Thinking of some of my word nerd friends, I’m going to work in a word I like, one that crept up elsewhere today and sounds fun to say. I mean the feeling of the word and not the construct of the definition the language has provided. It would ordinarily never find a special place in this ordinary blog.
Here is that word: misanthrope.
It is a person who dislikes humankind and avoids human society. A philanthropist, meanwhile, is of course, a person who tries to promote the welfare of others. We probably all know people of both kinds.
I’ve yet to meet an anthrope, however.
It reminded me, for some reason, of when I was a public speaker — one of the things I wish I were better at — I would speak to a lot of high school kids. This was when I was in college or even high school myself, which is no easy thing. Without a wide separation between the speaker and audience you have a tenuous dynamic, and, what’s more, delivering a speech to your peers is a bit of an odd experience for the speaker.
Anyway. Before the speeches I’d always talk to the important people and visit with people that liked to shake hands and do all of that. When I could I’d find the most trusting kids there and let them challenge me: give me five words I can’t get in this speech. I’d “bet” them a dollar or something, just for laughs, and take their random words: suitcase, picket fence, monster trucks, whatever.
Then there was inevitably a place in the speech where I could drop in a list of outlandish words. If I couldn’t get them all in casually, I could do it rhetorically: “You could think the most important thing on earth are puppies or suitcases or picket fences or high yield interest rates or monster trucks or misanthropes.” It was inane, but an easy private giggle.
(I never took money off of anyone. I abhor gambling. I have a distaste for all manner of betting that involves an actual exchange, I don’t even like to linger near slot machines to admire the lights and sounds, so don’t think I was stealing from trusting kids. It was something funny to do. And maybe it kept someone from being taken in by a real con.)
Every now and then, too, one of those lists of words bubbles up in my memory. They’re always worth a smile. People will think up the most random terms when you ask them to think that way.
From the PC World has Caught Up With Us Department: Friends of ours just retrieved their daughter from summer camp, where she no doubt made up many silly words and spoke in a vocabulary full of pop culture references you and I wouldn’t understand. One suspects there was swimming, and a careful attempt by camp counselors to avoid poisons of oak and ivy.
You hope the kids had S’mores and other delightful things. There was sinking. Perhaps some canoeing. The whole summer camp routine.
Except, we were told, for ghost stories.
Ghost stories are right out.
It seems that some years back, at this camp or another one, no one was clear, a particularly good ghost story was told and that turned into a problem for one of the kids. That child was quickly no doubt noticed, stigmatized and isolated, just in case things took a turn toward Lord of the Flies.
Then that poor child’s parents (and wouldn’t you like to know what kind of people they are?) found out about it. Soon after the family’s lawyer found out about it …
And now they just tell lawyer stories at camp.
I watched a movie a few days back I’ve been meaning to mention. One of those middle-of-the-day movie channel listings that never got a lot of wide publicity when it was in theaters. But it was the middle of the day, I haven’t been able to do much post-surgery, it had decent actors — and also Ben Affleck playing Ben Affleck — and was topical, so fine. The Company Men:
Yesterday was business as usual. But today, life has other plans.
So this is a big company and Affleck’s character is the first to get downsized as a redundancy. He was a hot shot sales broker who’s now adrift with a family and a mortgage he can’t afford.
“I’m a 37-year-old, unemployed loser,” he tells his wife, and himself, when he hits bottom.
And then Chris Cooper gets canned. Cooper is the kind of actor that, if I made movies, could take any role in my production he wanted. I like his work, even when he isn’t even trying hard. He tries a few things here and almost all of them are splendid. He’s a part of the old guard, you see, he came up when this big public company was just a small ship building outfit. And now he’s an executive nearing 60 and what is he supposed to do?
“I’ve got one kid in college and another going in the fall,” he worries. And he was worried when the first round of cuts didn’t even nab him.
And then there’s Tommy Lee Jones, who was one of the original people from the company. He’s the old guy with a conscience, sorta, making waves until he’s edged out by his best friend. But as Craig T. Nelson’s evil boss character reminds him, his stock options are worth millions.
So the movie is about finding yourself, or trying to, when you have lost this important part of the western cultural identity.
Kevin Costner is in this movie too. He’s a contractor. Ben Affleck’s brother-in-law. He gives him, and some other down on their luck guys, a few jobs in the winter time. He’s working overtime on a house just to get the house done so he can pay his small crew. Meanwhile the company that’s cutting people is expanding into glorious new headquarters.
The movie is meant to be antagonistic toward the evil, misanthropic (there’s that word again) corporate world. It means to portray the small business owner, Costner, who didn’t build that, as a port in the storm. The guy that does something, the man that builds something with his own hands, he’s a lot more sure of himself than a mindless corporate automaton who only moves phantom numbers.
“Easy work, huh Bobby? Pretty much like moving comp reports from the inbox to the outbox.”
Except Costner’s dealing with his own tempest. But he’s one of the good guys, and the movie all but forgets him. He’s all but a Greek hero, you see, because the economy is off — People getting fired or fear for their jobs don’t expand their kitchens, which then impacts the hardware store, so they fire a few people, and also the carpenter, this pervasive fear just manages to seep into every aspect of a community, it is almost as if there should be some economic name for that phenomena — but he’s still working hard so he can help out the even littler little guy. But he’s being played by one of the two biggest actors in the movie and is a great story, so let’s almost ignore him. It was odd.
It is nice, once in a while, to see a movie tell a story without a lot of explosions. It had that going for it. And, also, Ben Affleck.
photo / weekend — Comments Off on Catching up 22 Jul 12
This is the day with extra pictures. These are the things that didn’t show up elsewhere throughout the week. Or, as we see here, that have taken over the week. Like ice!
And those gel and pellet packs. They don’t melt.
I’ve worn a lot of ice on my shoulder this week. It is very exciting after about … Wednesday.
But we also tinkered with our new bike trainer. I mentioned this the other day, but here are a few pictures. This is the front wheel stand. You place the front wheel here, so you don’t go anywhere. Apparently you can stack them one on top of another for a more uphill experience. But we’ll just work up to that, won’t we?
This is the part of the trainer that you attach to the back of the bike. You bolt the custom skewer onto the bright and shiny silver parts at the bottom:
And so the back tire then fits snugly on that silver cylinder in the back. That drum spins along with the tire. There are two tension knobs on the back. What they’ll do remains a mystery. It’ll be a few more weeks before I can tell you.
Right now I can’t do anything more than rest my hand on the handlebars. And pick up a glass of water. Otherwise, my arm is tucked away so I don’t run into a doorsill and my hand is just there for balance.
“But, Kenny, you just had surgery on Monday.”
I’m ready to be back to normal again, thanks.
“But, Kenny, you have to take it easy. The collar bone is one of the most painful injuries.”
