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13
Jun 23

‘We are fortunate ones, fortunate ones, I swear’

That time I got to hang out with Charley Pride in Nashville.

The reason The Ryman is called the mother church of country music, Wikipedia will tell us, is, in part …

The auditorium opened as the Union Gospel Tabernacle in 1892. Its construction was spearheaded by Thomas Ryman, a Nashville businessman who owned several saloons and a fleet of riverboats. Ryman conceived the idea of the auditorium as a tabernacle for the influential revivalist Samuel Porter Jones. He had attended one of Jones’ 1885 tent revivals with the intent to heckle, but was instead converted into a devout Christian who pledged to build the tabernacle so the people of Nashville could attend large-scale revivals indoors. It took seven years to complete and cost $100,000 (equivalent to $3,257,037 in 2022). Jones held his first revival at the site on May 25, 1890, when
only the building’s foundation and six-foot walls had been completed.

Now, Samuel Porter Jones is from a small patch of nowhere in Alabama, on the Georgia border. He grew up in Cartersville, Georgia, a small quiet town north of Kennesaw, which is north of Atlanta. I spent some Saturdays in Cartersville in 2006, wandering around taking pictures of the aging downtown while The Yankee was teaching her first classes. We were even younger then than we are today.

Anyway, the other reason they may call The Ryman the mother church is because it still feels like a church, from the pews to the faux windows to the classic mid-century church light fixtures.

So this building was inspired by the Georgian Samuel Jones — who could be coarse, who was outlandish, and who was one of the most popular revivalist preachers of is day.

But … do you know who else is from Georgia?

The bummer of this, one of the less recalled power songs from “Swamp Ophelia” is that my alarm went off in the middle of the song. And, it turns out, that when the alarm goes off the video recording stops. The last 30 seconds or so aren’t here, but the best of it, and the best of it, are here.

“Swamp Ophelia” is their fifth album, and, they played four songs from it, counting “Fugitive,” in this show.

On the record, this is one of those tracks that has a symphonic accompaniment, but it comes to life in the live show. I guess it just got lost for me on the record, but then along came the 2010 live album, “Staring Down the Beautiful Dream.” It included a masterful version of the song from a 2009 New Jersey show, a powerful, urgent version that is not at all easy to dismiss. So, hearing it live now, still feels new. And anytime Amy Ray sings her heart out, I’m happy to hear it.

Which is going to make the next several videos a lot of fun.

It is time for a Tuesday tabs feature. Tabs, they sure do add up. Bookmarks cost nothing, but some pages just don’t seem to rise to that level. And, yet, some pages are too valuable to simply press the little X. So they just sit there, open for ages. But, instead of keeping them up, I’m memorializing a few of those sorts of sites here, just on the off chance I do decide to look that one thing up again one day.

I’ve always enjoyed this idea. I wonder what the neighbors would think. I wonder if you could just do sections of your property. Replacing your lawn with wildflowers has loads of benefits

To prove it, a team at King’s College has broken a long-held tradition. In 2019, they stopped nearly half of the college’s iconic Back Lawn from being mown for the first time since it was laid in 1772 and planted a wildflower meadow mix in the topsoil of this region.

A sprinkling of poppies, cornflowers, and oxeye daisies later burst into life. According to new findings, the football field-sized patch of color now supports more than 3.6 times as many plants, spiders, and bugs as nearby lawns.

In fact, the biomass of invertebrates living in the meadow is 25 times higher than what lives in a regular lawn, including twice as many species in need of conservation.

Researchers say the meadow supported about four times as many declining plant species in 2021 as it once did as a lawn.

I clicked this one thinking I’d nail it, but I was surprised by what I read. It lands here because it seems obvious that it’d be good to adapt some of these approaches. Harvard-trained psychologist: If you use any of these 9 phrases every day, ‘you’re more emotionally secure than most’:

Emotionally secure people are empowered, confident and comfortable in their own skin. They walk the world with authenticity and conviction, and do what is meaningful to them.

As a Harvard-trained psychologist, I’ve found that this sense of self-assuredness makes them better able to navigate conflict and be vulnerable with others, mostly because they aren’t looking for external validation.

But takes a lot of work to get there. If you use any of these nine phrases, you’re more emotionally secure than most people:

I’ve seen one of these, but the rest will just have to go on the list of things to get around to watching one day. 6 must-see World War II documentaries:

Numerous documentaries have ventured to convey the seemingly insurmountable odds confronted by ground, air and naval forces, and the immense sacrifices that resulted.

As such, we compiled a list of five comprehensive World World II documentaries that best tell these harrowing stories.

OK, if you insist. Ireland self-drive tour – Your 7-day to 14-day itinerary:

Whether travelling for one week or two weeks, our itinerary provides all the major highlights of the beautiful Emerald Isle.

On this scenic drive, see ancient historic sites and monastic ruins set in the beautiful Irish countryside. The stunning sheer cliffs of the coast hide secluded bays and sheltered beaches ready to explore.

Best of all, meet the locals in their friendly towns, small and large, that define the island.

When do we leave?

cycling / history / Monday / music / photo / Re-Listening / video — Comments Off
12
Jun 23

I just won’t move fast

Got a bit of back lockup syndrome. I’ve been fighting shoulder aches and muscle spasms for about two weeks. It’s been the try a different way to sleep sort of thing. A get a household massage every other day sort of thing. A take a muscle relaxer and try to sleep it off sort of thing. Only, now, moving things around the house, it’s become a sit very still sort of thing.

It’ll pass in good time.

Fortunately, I can still do this. A little. For a time.

We had a nice ride on Saturday. The first 18 miles were great!

But after that first hour, my shoulder started sending the familiar signals. And then my back started sending new information to the brain, too. And so I found myself slowing down.

This year, a new bit of information has been passing through the ol’ central nervous system. It involves the tip of the middle toe on my right foot. It’s a contact thing.

I googled this on all of the cycling sites. They suggest my equipment might be getting old, but there’s only 3,500 miles on these Specialized Torches, which I purchased in February of last year. (But do you see the big paint scrapes on that pedal arm? I may need a new bike.) They also suggested my shoes might be too tight, but I checked them before this Saturday ride, and they are not.

There’s not a clever punchline or wrap up to that story, which, I’m sure, means it comes down to technique.

We saw The Indigo Girls at the Union Gospel Tabernacle, the mother church of country music. The former home of the Opry. The Ryman Auditorium.

Somehow, this was my first time at The Ryman. And I have video. I’m going to stretch this out for a while. So, for today, here’s the opening act, Aaron Lee Tasjan and his band.

Some New York writer once said Aaron Lee Tasjan had a unique take on what the author called “indie folk grit.”

I don’t know what that means.

But I did see Arlo Guthrie in this performance. You will, too. And if you caught the whole act, there’s a modern day John Prine emerging in that act, too.

Opened in 1892, the Ryman was famously the home of the Grand Ole Opry from the 1940s to the 1970s. It was, by then, a building showing it’s age. The performers didn’t like it. The audiences were hard on the venue. And so the Opry moved to the amusement park. Roy Acuff, who had a big stake in Opryland, wanted to raze The Ryman. He probably imagined his hand on the plunger. A big public effort, though, kept the building alive. It got exterior renovations in 1989, the interior was lovingly improved in the early 1990s. In the late 90s the Opry came back for special events and for an early-winter schedule. (They’re still doing the legendary old show over at Opry Mills, even though the amusement park itself is now long gone.) More work was done on The Ryman in the teens. Last year they opened a Rock ‘n’ Roll wing, and so all of this is fitting, to me.

I think I can get about two weeks of videos out of what I recorded at this show. It was great. But we’ll get into that.

Here’s a very quick installment from the Re-Listening project. Regular readers know I’m listening to all of my old CDs in the order in which I acquired them. We’re in 1999 right now. This is a soundtrack, and to a show I never watched or liked. If I say I’ve watched five complete episodes of South Park I’ve come in high. But the Chef songs were, at the time, kind of funny.

Problem is, what was kind of funny to me then is sub-sophomoric now. This thing went four-times platinum in Australia, and was also certified platinum in New Zealand, Canada, the UK and here in the States. It ended 1999 at number 65 on the year-end U.S. Billboard 200, so I’m willing to accept I have the minority opinion. You’ll just have to accept that I’m correct.

The songs that aren’t dated and insincere comedy, by and large, just don’t appeal to me. This is the only song I looked forward to.

Tomorrow, there’s no Re-Listening project. We’re all caught up! But there will be a great Indigo Girls song and some other almost equally amazing content. Also, my back will feel better.

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30
May 23

A photo in tin

I didn’t know this photo existed, but when we stopped by to see my grandfather, who is always full of surprises, he fished this image out of a stack. There were a handful of photos of him as a little boy, posing in a studio with his beautiful mother, and even some of his grandmother, who I knew.

Think of it. I have real memories of a great-great-grandmother who died, at 92, when I was in high school. I also had a great-grandmother who died when I was in college, and another great-grandmother who lived until I was 28. But this isn’t about those remarkable people. This is about this new-to-me photograph.

These people are my mother’s mother’s parents, my maternal-maternal great-grandparents. She died when I was three, but I don’t have any memory of her. He died when I was five, and I have a few glimpses of him in my mind’s eye.

Here, he’s holding my great-aunt. We estimate she’s about three years old in that photo, putting him at about 24 and his wife at about 21. She’s holding a great-uncle I never knew. But look how young!

My great-grandmother here looks like my grandmother. And from a few photos of this young woman I can see traits of most every woman in my family.

Earlier this month my mom texted me a photo of when she was a child, some four decades after the picture here. It looks like a vacation photo. She’s in oversized glasses, with her parents and her grandparents, the ones pictures here. Behind my mother is her grandmother, a mid-century grandma out of central casting. Her daughter, my grandmother, looks impossibly young in that way that never makes sense when you’re only accustomed to seeing someone in a different stage of their life. My grandfather is there, short sleeve button down, shiny watch, comical shorts (though I never knew him, I never think of him wearing shorts) and shin high dark socks. Now, except for those socks, it all works, because he has the mod haircut of the time and he’s wearing the best sunglasses 1960s technology had to offer.

Behind them all is my great-grandfather, my mother’s grandpa. That guy above. Long pants, long-sleeved shirt with a large windowpane print, with a neat little banded fedora on top of his head. He’s holding a cup with a straw in his left hand. They all look like they’re posing for a serious rock band photo, or as if something important has happened in front of them just as the photo was taken. They weren’t ready for a modern posed photograph, except for my great-grandfather, who is smiling just a bit.

He’s probably, let’s say, mid-early-60s in the image I just described. I remember him as an even older man, of course. Here he is, with two of his great-grandchildren. (He’d have 15 or so great-grandkids, but he wouldn’t get to meet the all. The best one is standing to his left, anyway.) He’s sitting in a creaky old lawn chair in his daughter’s lawn. I remember those chairs, and I spent a lot of time in that grass, beneath the kitchen window, around the little well building, and in front of the giant shop building.

He’s been posed in front a big building for both of those photos. It’s rather poetically symmetric in a way.

Trying to find a way to wrap up this post, I looked up some of that young woman’s lineage. With a few clicks, I was able to trace my great-great grandmother’s ancestors back five more generations, to when her great-great-great grandfather immigrated to South Carolina from Ireland aboard a vessel called the Lord Dunluce in 1772. He was 17-ish, came over alone, and had 100 acres coming to him, somehow. He got married, at 19, in 1774. He died in 1808, and is buried in South Carolina. Another part of her family, the Internet tells me, came from North Carolina after crossing the Atlantic at some point in the middle of the 18th century. That branch can be traced back, with no effort on my part, to the 16th and 17th century and places like Aarau and Zurich, Switzerland. Still others came over to Massachusetts, seemingly from England, in the early part of the 17th century.

But I’m going to wrap it up this way. My great-grandmother, in that first photo above, was picking cotton one morning. She was full-term, and, the story goes, delivered one of her children around midday. In the afternoon, she was back out in the field picking cotton again.

history / IU / photo / Thursday — Comments Off
27
Apr 23

Some notes from Franklin Hall

This evening was my last late night on campus this semester. Students were producing a comedy show. The main character had a psychotic break of some sort. There was hypnosis, which didn’t work, and so they proceeded directly to lobotomy.

This is how the universe provides inspiration. The lobotomy bit was a simple go-home gag. Someone had a first aid kit, and produced some gauze.

I was sitting in another part of the studio typing away on this or that and I heard someone say “If only we had some blood, or a blood-like substance.”

Well. Earlier that same day, there had been an end-of-the-semester party in the commons. Wings for sports bros. Someone did a halfhearted job cleaning up afterward and there was a table loaded down with those ketchup packets. Someone went to grab a few of those, and suddenly there were special effects and makeup.

I hope someone added that to their LinkedIn.

Earlier this week I went into what I think is the one public space of our building I’ve never visited. I had a chance encounter with a delivery man. He had a shipment of paper. On the paperwork was a name no one recognized. Someone assumed this mysterious man might somehow work with the Board of Trustees. On the top floor of our building the Board of Trustees have a small set of offices. So I went up there to ask if anyone there knew the name.

They did not know the name. But they did have a few nice photos of the building. This is the laying of the cornerstone of Franklin Hall, originally the campus library, circa 1906.

The university’s archives say John William Cravens is at center wearing a bow tie and skimmer. Cravens founded a newspaper at 20 years old. He moved to Bloomington at 21, became a school superintendent, clerk of the circuit court, founded and ran for 13 years, a local paper, The Bloomington World, which is the ancestor of the current struggling rag. While he was doing some of these things he was also going to college, and was named university Registrar, as a student. (Different times, I tell ya.) He stayed on as Registrar for 41 years. In the background, hatless and wearing a white shirt is famed classical historian Harold Whetstone Johnston. Six years later, he killed himself on a train. William Lowe Bryan is standing at the right corner of the building wearing a skimmer.

Bryan is important. He finished his bachelor degree in 1884 and named an English instructor. A few months later, he joined the faculty of the Greek Department. The next year, he was named an associate professor. (Different times, I tell ya.) In the next few years, he became renowned for his work on the study of children, and was a charter member of the American Psychological Association. He became a VP of the university and then, in 1902, just 18 years after graduating, he was named president of IU. He was at the helm for 35 years, boom times, when he oversaw the beginning of the schools of medicine, education, nursing, business, music, and dentistry, many graduate programs and several satellite campuses, and, of course, this building, the library.

The Board’s office also has this print on the wall. This is just before the original construction was completed, so 1907. The archives hold this photo as a donation from the photograph albums of Floy Underwood, which I believe is a woman named Flora Underwood. I can’t find out much more about her, though.

If you follow the building into the background you can see the area where my office would eventually appear. If you want to see more Franklin Hall, here are the archives, which features some of those early days, a mid-century renovation, the fire in the 1960s, a few postcards and background shots. And then, just at that moment in history when cameras became ubiquitous and digital photography got cheap … the collection ends in 2003. Nothing about this, the third version of Franklin Hall’s life, which is wild. If you want, then, to see the promotional video we produced at the beginning of this incarnation of the building, go here.

I’ll be back there tomorrow, the last day of classes of the spring term. I’ll have two different productions running in two different studios. One of them will wrap up a multi-year project. The other will wrap IUSTV’s production run for the year. Big Friday.

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6
Apr 23

Some days peak early

Eaaaarly this morning there was a car chase in Los Angeles, where it was still late in the evening. All of the local television stations put their helicopters in the air. The want was for a stolen car, suspect armed and dangerous. The driver stayed on the surface streets, stayed within an eight-block-or-so radius.

Car chases come with a set of truisms. The person involved isn’t making their best choices. And they are all amazing drivers, until they aren’t. Sometimes, these things are amazing advertisements for the durability of cars. And they can be oddly, voyeuristically entertaining, until they sometimes become terrifying. Which is why all of those media sorts were orbiting this guy.

The driver paused, and two people emerged. The passengers skittering away under the police chopper’s big light. They ran spike strips out in front of the car, those big metal set ups that are designed to be driven over, top puncture the tires of the stolen car, and then an officer yanks them away so that the tires of his colleagues’ cruisers are unscathed. To do this, you have to know where the driver is going, the road has to be open, and you’ve got to get there with the gear before the driver, and get him to actually drive over the giant metal spike strips. Sometimes the driver is wise to this, and swerves around them, but, also, see the first truism above.

This guy got spike strips at least three times, which meant he was utterly predictable, and that he couldn’t figure this out. See, again, the first truism.

The first two people who got out of the car, one of them was apprehended right away. The other a short time later, as the chase continued. After a time, the driver paused and another person exited the car. That person gave themselves up quickly as the driver sped on. More laps, more helicopters, more cruisers, more spike strips.

When the tires flatten, you can still drive. The car is noisy, and difficult to control. Now the driver is fishtailing. The driver can’t hold a straight line, because he’s lost three tires. And, eventually, the wasted rubber of the tires gives away, and the car, still going, but slower, has even less control, because the car is down to the rims.

And this guy was going Back to the Future.

Finally, he stopped. And, as is often the case, the stop seemed both delayed and abrupt. It was entirely unsurprising and, like so many of these things, anticlimactic.

The ones that have a climactic ending really, really make you question why you’re watching.

Why I watch is because of these poor news anchors and the interactions with the long-suffering helicopter reporters, how loose and rigid they are with their language and ideals, how there is seldom any followup, even if they’ve ginned up any given chase into something compelling, and how they prove, like me, to be poor play-by-play commentators.

Whoever was on the desk of the station I was watching tonight had a great way of rephrasing, without at all reframing, what had just been said by her colleagues not 45 seconds earlier. The whole thing is parody not beyond satire.

So there I was — watching this not good driver, make not-the-best choices, as the driver and a fifth person were taken into custody — wondering why I was watching this eaaaarly this morning while it was still late in the evening in Los Angeles.

I’ll watch the next one too.

Ron Burgundy knew what he was doing.

More music, because that’s the theme around here as we labor to catch up on the Re-Listening project. It’s every CD I own, in the order in which I picked them up. These aren’t reviews, anything but!

Imagine, in your early post-adolescence, discovering Keb’ Mo’. Invite some friends over, you put on “Just Like You”, his third album, for which he won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album — an honor he’s won twice more, and been nominated for seven times, total — and you are suddenly musically erudite. (From jazz to contemporary blues within one page of this book of CDs!)

He released this in the summer of 1994. I got my copy in … let’s say the end of 1998 or the very beginning of 1999. Someone gave this to me, or it was a work freebie, or something like that. I don’t have the liner notes, never did. But I have that drum and that harmonica, starting off a whole record. Musically erudite, I tell you.

Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt, two people who shape all of modern blues-pop if you ask me, appear on the title track. You can’t do better than that for supporting vocals.

This record just cracked the U.S. Billboard 200 in 1997, staying on that chart for just one week.

Is there a Robert Johnson cover? There is a Robert Johnson cover.

How the man that influenced everything ever done in blues (and most of rock ‘n’ roll post-1961) did it.

Also in 1997, Keb’ Mo’ portrayed Robert Johnson in a documentary.

Never mind that Johnson died at 27 and Keb’ Mo’ was 45 or 46 at the time. Keb’ Mo’ has 19 records out there now, with all of those Grammy awards, and he’s still touring at 71. He has two shows next week in Australia, and then begins a 25-date U.S. tour later this month.

And we are now just two (much less musically erudite) CDs behind on the Re-Listening project.