This is a filler post, as we spent most of the day traveling today. We woke up in Savannah, picked up our last little shopping treats, had breakfast, sat in the park and then got an Uber to the airport. It was after 9 p.m. when we got back to the house in Indiana. So, you can imagine.
I don’t know if Tom Hanks or David Moscow is still looking, but I found the Zoltar machine.
No one was as excited about seeing this banner as I was. Most things that interest me don’t seem to appeal to anyone else, which is weird. I’m sure it’s them, and not at all me. Anyway, Repurpose Savannah “is a women+ led 501(c)3 nonprofit establishing a sustainable future through the deconstruction and reuse of historic buildings.”
This is a movie prop poster. It is currently displayed in the window of an appliance story that’s set up to look like a 1960s retail shop. I want the actual poster, and some of the bakelite that was inside.
On the same block, the SCAD theater is also going to be a part of that movie. The parking spaces are also currently filled with period cars. For a time, this part of Savannah is pretending to be Cocoa Beach, Florida.
This is the Cathedral Basilica of St. John the Baptist, home of the Diocese of Savannah, which covers 90 counties.
The bumpy, yet smooth, bricked road that is River Street, the primary tourist trap of Savannah.
Another version of this will become a banner on the blog.
If you go down there, though, you get great views of the vessels moving up and down the river.
I don’t care that there’s a tugboat in the foreground for scale, there’s not really a way to accurately convey the size of this thing, which started its voyage in Japan, made ports of call in Tacoma and Long Beach, then crossed the Panama Canal to visit Savannah. Four years ago, that ship rescued 11 Tunisian fishermen who were victims of a hit and run by another large vessel.
Here’s one more shot of our tree at Forsyth Park. Just on the other side, and trending a bit to the right of the trunk, 14 years ago, almost to the day.
Finally, here’s The Yankee, who planned this trip — which is why it was excellent — hanging out with Santa Claus. (She planned a really nice trip. She should have just made it longer.)
Another picture of her with a slight less authentic, but more lifelike, Santa is going on the Christmas cards this year.
It was 58 degrees when I limped in from my run this evening. I did 4.25 miles, though I’d hoped for 4.5. I cut it short after I twinged my knee, which caused the limping, somewhere early in the second mile. And that’s how I came to spend the evening with an ice pack on my leg.
It’ll be 30 degrees cooler than that when I go to work tomorrow.
I’ll be somewhere much warmer, soon enough, for a brief time.
So I limped around the house, eating leftovers, cleaning up runaway rice, taking out the garbage, trying to find every way possible to bend over or squat down or get on hands and knees while wondering what I’d done to myself, waiting for the Ibuprofen to kick in.
We didn’t check on the kitties yesterday, and don’t think I didn’t notice that you noticed. You noticed. I know. This is the most popular feature on the website.
Phoebe has developed the habit of needing to be on the bathroom counter anytime I go through there. The easier for me to pet her, I suppose.
We have also come to the time of year where Poseidon has discovered a personally imperative need to be under a blanket. Any blanket near you will do. Body heat is important.
Sometimes it has been cool enough that they’ll even get near one another, which is otherwise unusual for these too.
Phoebe would like it to happen less.
Back to the Re-listening Project, where we’re listening to all the old CDs, in chronological order. These aren’t reviews, but just for fun, like all of music.
“6th Avenue Heartache was released as a single in April of 1996 and got a lot of airplay as it climbed to number 10 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks, and eight on the Modern Rock Tracks. It had Jakob Dylan singing over a Hammond organ and in front of Adam Duritz’s charming background vocals. So I bought the record. “Bringing Down the Horse” climbed to number four on the US Billboard 200, and it topped the US Heatseekers Albums chart. (I did that!)
This was a time when I was pretty sure that the judicious use of a well-placed Hammond organ was the most brilliant thing you could do musically. This record didn’t disabuse me of that notion.
Turns out, you can use a lot of that organ before you wear it out.
This was a car album for me, but it’s hard to imagine this didn’t play around our place a lot. Upbeat honky tonk from Leo LeBlanc who played with John Prine, Bill Medley, Aretha Franklin, Jose Feliciano, Merle Haggard, Clarence Carter and approximately everyone else, besides.
Sadly he died just before this record was released.
Gary Louris and Michael Penn are among the other huge stars that sing on the thing, but I didn’t realize all of that until much later. See if you can pick them out here.
Louris, who we’ll later hear a lot is in this one.
When I wrap up the Re-Listening Project I should start a Re-Louris project. I’m curious if there’s anyone he can’t effortlessly harmonize with.
Meanwhile, Michael Penn, who’s music I listened to ad nauseam, as if to dissect every possible tonal nuance, is in this song.
Speaking of over and over, the next record is the first one I’ve gone back and listened to twice on the Re-Listening Project. That has to mean something.
This is Camille Pissarro’s “The Boulevard Montmartre on a Winter Morning.” Or part of that 1897 work, anyway. Circumstances, and shooting from the hip, and just trying to get the part I wanted. And the point is to say, guess what we saw today?
That’s the clue, and so was the headline, I guess. But the answer is, the impressionists!
Here’s part of Monet’s “Water Lily Pond.”
But the museum trip wasn’t about paintings directly, but rather a digital introduction and interpretation. Art in the 21st century, remixing the old masters. (More on that tomorrow.) And getting photobombed in the transitional elements of the show.
There’s a part where you can take your picture on an iPad, and select a filter — a big hit pre-Instagram, I’m sure — and then have it displayed on the art wall. Here we are.
This is a small work of Paul Cezanne, “Landscape at Auvers.”
Cézanne was an innovator and influenced countless modern artists as he sought to both reflect nature and show his own response to it, whatever that meant at the time. His mentor was Pissarro, but he would eventually move away from the impressionist movement.
Edgar Degas is also an impressionist, but he also worked in sculptures, and this one is on display at the LUME. The one on the right, I mean.
This is “Dancer Moving Forward, Arms Raised” which was found in Degas’ studio and cast in bronze in 1920, a few years after his death.
Here’s another painting of Camille Pissarro’s. This is an oil on canvas, circa 1865. Pissarro is sort of the elder statesman of the impressionists, and the neo-impressionist movement. Oh, and also post-impressionism. Talent, longevity and a willingness to grow allowed him to cover a lot of 19th century bases. Now, if you aren’t particularly an art connoisseur, you might not be familiar with Pissarro, so let’s just say this. Over the course of four-plus decades, all of the artists of the era — Cézanne, Gauguin, Renoir, Seurat, van Gogh — were all influenced by the man.
Pissarro was a contemporary of Armand Guillaumin, and this is one of his works, the 1877 “Quai d’Austerlitz.” It shows the left bank of the Seine River in Paris where Guillaumin worked nights for the Bridges and Roads Department. Later he won the lottery, and decided to spend his time on landscape paintings. Excellent choice, moving on to things you love.
And this is Pierre-August Renoir’s “Bouquet in a Vase.” Big broad, rapid strokes. I wonder how long this sort of canvas took to complete in the hands of a master.
And since Claude Monet is the name on the event, here’s a Monet. This is “Charing Cross Bridge, London” a turn-of-the-century oil on canvas. You can tell without even reading the placard that this is Monet’s London.
He spent the Franco-Prussian War there, and he painted almost 100 paintings of the Thames during his time in smoggy London Town. Monet spent a lot of time playing with the light and the smoke and fog that gave the Big Smoke its reputation.
Group picture time! (This is just before the gift shop. Every thing in its place.)
I’ll have more from this fun Newfields exhibit tomorrow.
After dinner we went back to Newfields for Winterlights, and a quick walk through of the famous Lilly House. I was surprised to see this part of the house. They lifted this idea directly from my Pinterest page.
Here are some of the Winterlights. The big blue tunnel near the grand finale.
The weather was perfect. Everyone at Newfields was having a great time and full of the initial holiday cheer of the season. There will be a video or two from the lights show tomorrow, too. But it’s late, and, for now, I want to leave you with one final impression.
We voted this morning. Took a quick trip to the local middle school where all of the sign holders were sunny and pleasant and one of the men running for local office was out greeting people at the 50-foot line. By the time we got our ballots I’d forgotten about them entirely. After walking 50 feet and then waiting 30 seconds to get my ballot, I’d forgotten all about those people.
The ballot here was front and back. One school funding referendum, one Senate and one House seat. There were a lot of local seats for council this, commission that. The jobs you seldom see campaigned for, because the campaign budget isn’t there, but the people in them impact the day-to-day business of this in a direct way.
We also had the opportunity to vote on whether two judges should be retained. It’s a system this state has used for a half century.
Once appointed, a judge must stand for retention at the first statewide general election after the judge has served for two full years. If retained, the judge is on the retention ballot every 10 years. The retention system is designed to allow appellate judges to decide cases fairly and impartially, free from campaign finance considerations, and without influence by partisan politics.
Everything is a tryout, I guess.
Tonight, the student-journalists are trying a new thing. The students from the television station presented a long collaboration with the newspaper students and the campus radio station. They covered the location elections from multiple locations, aired a special on the FM station and streamed live results and news on the web.
This is a big collaboration for them. It happened organically and, I think, that’s the best way. I’m very excited for what they’ve undertaken here, how it has played out and, mostly, for how I’ll get to brag on them after the fact.
Someone gets to be the cheerleader, and that person is me.
More on all of this tomorrow, though.
If you don’t want still more election stuff … here’s some more cycling stuff.
Yesterday we were talking about Major Taylor, the turn-of-the-century world champion. Early in his career he took part in a six-day race. I found this little package from ESPN which talked about what, for many, was a career-defining event.
The six day races are primarily European these days, and soon after Taylor’s, they were reimagined as team events. (If you ever see mention of a Madison, that’s what they’re talking about.) These days, they aren’t even racing 24 hours a day. But way back when, they were a solitary, continual, brutal war of attrition. In the U.S. the six-day races took place in Atlantic City, which saw two, in 1909 and 1932. In Boston, 13 such races took place between 1901 and 1933. Buffalo had 16 races starting in 1910, wrapping up in 1948. There were four in Newark in the early 19-teens. Chicago hosted 50 six-day races between 1915 and 1957, but Six Days of New York was, by far, the most popular American version. There were 70 installments, starting in 1899 and wrapping up in 1961. Taylor’s participation was in a predecessor to even that one.
Two guys — the Italian Olympic champion Franco_Giorgetti and the Australian world record holder Alf Goullet — won eight of those each, in The Big Apple. Both of those were of the relay variety, but still. One of the records Goullet set was at New York, in his 1914 victory,still stands. He and his teammate, Alfred Grenda, covered 2,759.2 miles.
If you rode a bicycle from Madison Square Garden to Las Vegas, Nevada, Google Maps tells me you’d do almost that exact same distance, except these masochists were doing that on a track, where the scenery seldom changes — but the hallucinations might!
Except we did run. The Yankee had her second post-op checkup and her surgeon gave her the green light to run, a little bit, when she felt like it. She felt like it, so we ran a little bit. Just a mile or so, being conscious of the jarring and vibration that comes with running.
I think, more than the run, she simply liked being able to do one more thing that was normal. It’s a big step, followed by another one at a brisk clip.
There’s a 10K to do next month. Plenty of time to ease into that, and then back into off-season base miles. One more thing that’s normal.
Did you enjoy Catober? It is one of my favorite times of the year. Phoebe and Poe are good sports the whole month as I try to put one camera or another in their face. And they cooperated right until this weekend, when I was trying to get a traditional bonus photo. If you missed a day, you can click that link, above, and see them all in reverse chronological order.
It was cold, you see, and we’d just made breakfast on Sunday morning. Put the stove cover back on, which I built to keep cats off the stove. So they sit on the cover, or near it, to enjoy the radiant heat from the slowly cooling stove and oven. This is the routine. Part of it, anyway.
Good thing I made that cover, I guess.
I saw this scene as I was parking this morning. This is the parking deck a block from our building, adjacent to where the old hotel/dorm/office building was. In fact, this is that removal project. You can’t really see much of this from my office anymore, but the heavy machinery work continues, and a dad thought enoufh of it to bring his kid. And they had a time.
They’re busting up cement with the big machines. Big repetitive sounds. The kid is bouncing in dad’s arms in time. It’s the cutest thing.
This is quite the treat for both of them, I’m sure.
We ran across this in Indianapolis on Saturday, and it didn’t really fit in yesterday’s sparse entry, so I’m putting it here.
“We thought. You. Was A. Toad!”
The soundtrack to “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” in a future installment of the Re-Listening Project. Speaking of which …
There’s not much new you can say about 1977’s “Bat Out of Hell.” The Meat Loaf, Jim Steinman debut is one of the best selling records in the history of everywhere. Meat Loaf became an actor and enjoyed a well-deserved musical renaissance in the 1990s, but “Bat Out of Hell is the mark. It is certified 14-times platinum in the U.S. and spent 522 weeks on the charts in the UK. It’s also 26-times platinum in Australia and two times diamond in Canada. It topped the Australian, Dutch, and New Zealand charts in it’s day. A quarter century later it found its way atop the Australian, Irish andAmerican album charts again in 2022, and landed in the top 10 in four other countries. It was as, they say, a minor success. I think they issued it to people in the suburbs for a time.
There was a time when someone bought this record, invited their friends over, and put this needle on the vinyl for the first time. Imagine, or remember, hearing the first 100 seconds of this rock opera for the first time.
That’s one of those first-time experience I’d like to have once more. Wikipedia:
Steinman insisted that the song should contain the sound of a motorcycle, and complained to producer Todd Rundgren at the final overdub session about its absence. Rather than use a recording of a real motorcycle, Rundgren himself played the section on guitar, leading straight into the solo without a break. In his autobiography, Meat Loaf relates how everyone in the studio was impressed with his improvisation. Meat Loaf commends Rundgren’s overall performance on the track:
In fifteen minutes he played the lead solo and then played the harmony guitars at the beginning. I guarantee the whole thing didn’t take him more than forty-five minutes, and the song itself is ten minutes long. The most astounding thing I have ever seen in my life.
Next up, a bit of Van Hagar. I bought my first Van Halen record, “OU812,” as a cassette in 1988 or so, when it came out. The first Van Halen CD to appear in the collection is a bit later in their catalog. It, like so much of the Sammy Hagar holds up.
I should have played this filler-track for Halloween.
If you’re looking for classic Van Halen riffs and percussion …
This iteration of the band was doomed to fail just after the supporting tour. In retrospect, I think you can hear it in Alex Van Halen’s drum solo. There’s just something grievous and entropic happening in here.
Now, “Baluchitherium” didn’t make it onto the vinyl format because of time constraints, but it’s full of that classic sound. And, score one for a more modern format.
Real Van Halen fans thought this riff sounded familiar. They were correct.
The record was three-times certified as platinum in the U.S. and Canada, but it was the last of Hagar. The band got tense on the road, because this is the Van Halen story. Three years later there was the one record with Gary Cherone, and then the last studio album, the still-tumultuous David Lee Roth version of the group.
Altogether, Van Halen had 12 studio albums — all but one of those landed in the top 10, and four of them, including “Balance” went to number one. (Balance was the last to hit the top of the charts.) From all of that, and two live albums and two more compilation albums, they released 56 singles. Thirteen of those sat atop the charts in the United States, and another 10 landed in the Top 10. But every time Van Halen comes to mind, for some reason, I think “What if?”
I’m sure that’s just my timing, talking.
Speaking of timing … just you wait until you hear the underwhelming anecdote I have for the next item on the Re-Listening Project.
I shouldn’t say it is very underwhelming … that might set the bar too high. But the story will not impress you at all.
