We drove to campus — problem getting to the car on time, no incidents getting out of the house — in good time today, and I’d like to take credit for all of that. I don’t deserve the credit, but I feel it should be mine, all the same. I usually volunteer to take the blame if we’re late (because it’s usually my fault when we’re late) so why not get the upside, right?
We were so on time there wasn’t even a person in the security guard shack to look for parking stickers. We overcame everyone’s expectations today.
The class before my class was not in the classroom, so I got in early and started setting up all of the things that we were going to talk about. Oh, the happy feeling of being organized.
Today we talked about the videos the students shot demonstrating different camera settings for aperture, white balance, ISO and so on. We set up external hard drives. We started organizing the workflow structure that the hard drives will use. And we started talking about the commercials they’ll be producing over the next three weeks. All of this took six hours.
Because, on Thurdays, I do it twice. Two classes, identical, back to back. This is fun in that it presents its own conceptual challenges. I thought the second class would be a better presentation — take two, and all that — but I am not sure which one comes across better. Sometimes the first class. But, then, the make up of the room in each class is a bit different, so class dynamics would have to fit into that, too.
Today though, finally, I stumbled into the thing I feared. There was a problem we discovered in the first class and, given the small 15 minute break in between, there wasn’t enough time to correct it for the second class. Fortunately it is a small thing. Where some settings are in differing versions of Premiere. No biggie. I can update that info in other ways. Just not in real time — which is the universe’s way of really understanding and appreciating my limitations, I think.
Darkness fell as we were driving back to the house, and that was the day. So let’s put some other stuff in this spot.
This plant that the sellers of our house left on the front porch for us — the one that we’ve been diligently watering every day because, despite what the little tag in the soil says about being drought resistant, it needs it — is now showing its gratitude.
No one wanted to go that direction anyway, Department of Transportation.
Here’s a strike you don’t read about much anymore. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877, specifically, in this case, the Baltimore railroad strike of 1877. We saw this on our way to the concert last night, right in the heart of Baltimore, very near where the demonstrations began. This strike involved several days of work stoppage and violence.
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 was a nationwide series of events, the enough-is-enough point of a global depression and series of economic hits during that decade. Around those parts, in Baltimore, the strike came about because the B&O Railroad was going to cut employees pay by 10 percent.
Four days into the demonstration, violence broke out. Police. The National Guard. Thousands of demonstrators. President Rutherford B. Hayes sent in the army, the locals called up 500 additional police. And for the next two days they were attacked with rocks and bottles and returned fire with rifles, ultimately putting down the protests. Wikipedia tells me Between 10 and 22 were killed, more than 150 were injured, and many more were arrested. Several of those killed were soldiers or local militiamen.
The strike itself, though it seems to have motivated others far to the west, failed. Most quit rather than work for less. The company hired replacements. Under armed oversight, rail traffic began again a few days later. The company made a few changes over the course of the next year. And that’s a pro-argument for unions, I suppose. Indeed, this is considered the first national strike, and labor historians point to the 1877 strike and violence as something that energized labor movements for the next several decades.
It seems distant enough to be from another planet, but whenever you get to that dramatic moment in a book or movie where the one side says “Are we going to fire on Americans?” the answer has, historically, never been that surprising.
We were, of course, in Baltimore to see Queen + Adam Lambert. This is where they kicked off their North American tour. And you can see them, too, right here.
Bicycle Race! It climbed to number 11 on the UK Singles Chart, and somehow only peaked at 24 in the Billboard Hot 100 in the US.
Lambert really leans into the whole show. It’s hilarious, one supposes, given the various layers involved in that song.
Fat Bottomed Girls went platinum in the U.K. and double-platinum in the U.S.
They all look like they enjoy that song, as do we. And the good news, I have enough videos to make it through most of the next week or so.
