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Instead of catching up, and because I needed to put something here for today, I’m offering up these deliberately fuzzy photos. I took them this way intentionally, but I’m not sure that I was aware, at any given time, that I had more than one or two of them in hand.
So, before the memories grow fuzzy, let’s let the pictures do it.
This one isn’t fuzzy, but if the sky and the ocean are showing off they deserve to be seen, wouldn’t you agree?
A year and a half ago I picked up some music for video beds and, today, I got a take down notice about one of them from YouTube. Someone had filed a complaint and now I have “a strike.”
I looked up the company and it seems they are doing this a lot, granting licenses and then revoking them for whatever reason. I suppose they feel they can get some sort of monetary gain from that. It is, in the common parlance, a shakedown.
So the old video was gone, which meant a page on my site did not have the appropriate video. And if there is one thing around here that we don’t abide by it is Errors That We Know About.
We are perfectly fine with Errors Of Which We Are Unaware.
So when you spot the bountiful errors, point them out. They get fixed with equal parts chagrin and alacrity.
Anyway, I had to find the right page, which was easily narrowed down to three or four, based on the context. And then I had to find the proper video. Of course, I wanted to upload the video again, this time with music from someone who isn’t a con artist. So I had to dig up the original video, which took a few searches, but was easy to find in the scheme of things. Feeling as though I was lucky to still have it, I loaded it in the video editor, dropped out the now illicit music, made an edit and then put in some bed music that hasn’t been pulled out from under me. The other music was better, but this is fine. I had some graphic considerations, and I figured that, since I was there, I may as well put it in the new video style. And here it is, new template, old video, acceptable new tune:
Took 15 minutes.
And no, I’m not updating all of my old videos to this template. It will probably wear on me soon enough as it is.
On the other hand, I got to read through my notes and see the videos and photos that I took on our trip with Jessica and Adam to Ireland in the summer of 2013, and that was grand. And, in one of those happy little coincidences, all of the headers (randomized for your variety) that I get when I refresh the page are from Ireland. Delightful.
Here are a few of the pages, now: The Cliffs of Moher, On Inisheer, the Aran Islands and On Inishmore, the Aran Islands.
I should just make a category and link to that, so amazing was the entire trip. We could then just jump to that amazing time in a wonderous place with ease. Give me a minute …
OK, when you want to go to Ireland, just go to Ireland.
About three days into that one of us said “We should have kept count on how many times we said ‘Oh wow!’ as we rounded each curve.” And we should have.
On the eighth day, seriously, we started contemplating employment there. Just beautiful.
Today was also lovely. The wind chill was just at freezing this morning when I went out for a run:
It took 1.75 miles to get warm. The last 2.25 miles were just hard, but I got in four miles for the day.
And then we spent the rest of the day watching football and trying to stay warm.
Our sunset:
An altogether fine Monday, the last of the old year, and two cheers for that. Hope your week is filled with more relaxation than work. Stop back by here, though. There will be plenty going on, of course.
My grandmother dug through the furniture and who knows where else she keeps it all, but she produced three albums and four boxes of photos tonight. I started her down this path by asking about a CD someone brought over several years ago that traced my grandfather’s family back to his grandfather through photographs.
It was essentially half an hour of people I didn’t know, mysterious black-and-white shots of people my grandmother knew as adults and then the later, questionable, hair and clothing styles of those later adults.
So we watched the disc and she named people and guessed at others. And then, somehow, we found ourselves in the back of the house. I was staring at pictures of my grandparents looking into a camera two decades younger than I am now. My wife was taking pictures of me from three decades ago. Suddenly we all felt so young, and so old. And it was all interesting and weird, except to see those that are gone, now, and to count them all up in your head.
I want to hear these stories and one day I want to ask a lot of questions about them, for posterity’s sake. Some of that information should continue on, somewhere, but I’m not sure if there’s much of an appetite for it. So it should be me that does it, then. And then my grandmother says “They’re all gone now, except for those two girls,” it breaks your heart a little to ask her to think about it.
On the other hand, the two times that I’ve started to dig into this a little bit, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a more real smile than when my grandmother is talking about her grandmother. It is worth it for that alone.
Anyway, some pictures.
That guy could straight up sing:
Stringbean, my grandmother said, always wore his pants like this. So he was fashion forward.
David Akeman and his wife were killed by burglars in their home in 1973. (One of their killers died in prison in 1973. The other was paroled just last month.)
But he could play that banjo, she insisted. No kidding. I picked this one because Porter Wagoner was my grandfather’s favorite, and Roger Miller shows up, he was one of my favorites:
If you hear the term clawhammer in a musical sense, this is the meaning. It is, now, considered the “old style” of banjo playing. (Earl Scruggs, who replaced Akeman in the great Bill Monroe band, is the pioneer of the “new” three-finger style.)
I don’t remember Akeman on Hee Haw reruns, but he was there. I’m sure we all laughed at his jokes, my grandparents and me, when the scarecrow was on camera. And now that entire show suddenly seems like a portal into a different time, my grandparents watching stars they’d grown up and were growing old with. Bright colors and bad puns beamed to their antennae, guest hosts and bad skits, all of the stuff in between hearing the songs they knew.
I’m even less certain why people collect head shots and autographs of politicians, but it makes the politicians happy. Once upon a time, at least, one of these was in a lot of homes in Alabama.
I wonder where my grandparents picked all of those up.
Here she is now. She figures she was about 18 or 19 in this picture.
“Let’s talk about this wallpaper,” I said.
“Let’s not,” she said.
She’s such a sweetheart.
This is the 70th anniversary of my great-grandfather’s service in Europe, and we’re following along what he did through this map I made some time back. Tonice was a combat medic in the 137th Infantry Regiment, which fought in the 35th Division. We don’t know which company, or even which battalion. This is only a regimental overview with some movements down to the company level.
So, then, for Dec. 22:
The 2nd Battalion arrived at Remering from Neunkirch. The 1st Battalion cleared into the town of Grundweiler. During the day an ordnance check was made and all ordnance items and several 50 calibers were tested for anti-aircraft defense.
The Regiment received more replacements, which helped raise the strength of the units. Eight officers and 220 enlisted men were received.
The 35th Infantry Division was ordered to move by combat team to Metz sometime during the day.
The 137th Infantry Combat Team, less the 219th FA Battalion, moved northwest toward Metz and its new assembly area, and, going through St. Avold, Boulet, and Metz, arrived at its destination, Moulins.
There isn’t an update in the unit history for December 23 — they were moving off the line and resting, primarily — so we’ll return to this on the 24th. You can follow along at your own pace on the map, however.
This information is derived from the unit history, found here and here and from this unit overview. These markers are rough estimates of locales and are meant only to be illustrative. Any errors are mine alone.
I posted my first videos to Vine today. Yes, I am behind.
I try to experiment with about every third MUST HAVE web craze. Skipping a few here and there tends to keep the pressure off. Some of those things will be gone before we know it anyway.
But Vine is proving it has staying power, and people are now talking about “How we can do more with it than just six second jokes.” That suggests an audience maturation, too. When it has more than one accepted use, I figure, might have think of some useful way to use it.
My first idea, was to use Vine as teasers for the video I shot yesterday. If you saw that, you already met the $120 Russian tortoise.
And you also saw the rabbit guinea pigs:
They’ll all catch up eventually, I’m sure.
We purchased neither. We did, however, get cat litter, in such amounts as to be valued at the equivalent of the per capita gross domestic product of Burundi. By the time you pick up pounds 85-126 your hands can sting in the cold winter air. But then that dog walked by and I thought “Establishing shot!”
And the puppy had no camera sense. Don’t look at the camera, dog.
Anyway, that was yesterday. Vines today. I have contributed, then, 12 seconds to the insatiable appetite of the Internet.
OK, fine, I contributed this too, on Twitter. As you know I collect Gloms, the Auburn yearbook. I was scanning a few more for the continuation of the covers project and was putting them away. I opened the back cover of the 2011 book to this picture.
A student took this photo, as did a lot of other nearby photographers, I’m sure. The versions you usually see make you wonder what he’s looking at as he turns. Maybe it was her. Here’s the play:
The line they put with that photo now has, I think, several extra meanings.
So I have put all of that on the web today. Also, family events and holiday events began today. Steak, chocolate cake, listening to people talk about cars and so on.
That turtle is rather captivating, right?
