Tuesday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Tuesday

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1
Aug 17

Say cheese

Today I helped a few people build out some cameras. One of our classrooms had 75 brown boxes. And in each brown shipping box we found two Canon boxes. And in each of those colorful Canon boxes there were three other boxes. Those boxes contained a camera body, a lens and a microphone. And a lot of packaging.

I didn’t think to take a photo of all of the bubble wrap and cardboard and the many piles of literature. There were two manuals, a registration, a warranty and some other stuff too. This was just one pile:

It took all day and then some, unpacking, removing the tape, wrestling with, and sometimes failing to avoid cardboard cuts. Then you had to deal with each part’s individual wrapping. Then put the lens on the body, the microphone in the hot shoe, and then thread the neck strap through the body. Do all of that 150 times. It took all day. They look nice, though:

Students are going to have a lot of cool new gear this year.
Tomorrow

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25
Jul 17

Look at all of this stuff that’s about to happen

Why is this car in a snow globe? What does this have to do with education? And why are those almost-stick figures to the right so interested in it?

You’d think that if you were going to examine the oddity of a car trapped in a glass globe you would do so from a position not within its potential path of travel. Just in case the car slips its parking gear or otherwise becomes sentient and carries a grudge.

But they weren’t thinking about things like that in the 1940s. (Honestly, that there’s a rug beneath it all seems the most unsettling to me. Why a rug? I mean, aside from the artist’s need to establish dimensions here, why does this encased car need a rug? Creepy.) Anyway, the answer to some of those questions are important, no matter the decade. You can find the answers, and a few more textbook photos to glance at here. If this looks new to you, check out all of the best art from this book right here. This, of course, is part of my collection of my grandfather’s books. You can see them all as they go online right here. And I think, now with that book completed I’ll have to change gears. After the texts already assembled on the site we’ll get into serious reads on algebra and biology. And I would worry that I’m just not talented or clever enough to make fun of formulas and geometric shapes and insect macros.

But! I also have a large stack of my grandfather’s old science magazines. We’ll start diving into those next week.

I’ve been dealing with a throat thing. It’s getting better, thanks. Something irritated it on Saturday morning and now it only hurts some of the time. I expect I’ll be healed just in time for something else to happen. Just like this. I’d been fighting some sort of sinus or respiratory thing for about two weeks– probably from the accumulated dust of these books, which I’m going to deal with this weekend, I think — and that finally cleared up in time for this throat issue.

It’ll take more than that to keep a chipper person with plans down, and so here we are. There are lots of things underway. I’m working on a new mobile version of my site. I have the book section going on Tuesdays. Markers on Wenesdays. I have some cool new videos to shoot, beginning next week I hope. I’m thinking about re-working a part of my office soon, too. And I have to start riding my bike more and running again. See? So many things to do … just as soon as I can swallow without wincing.

And now back to making a delicious spaghetti dinner.

You can see more on Twitter and Instagram too.

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18
Jul 17

This is about speed, and also the lack of that

Who is this man, and why does he look carefully calibrated to be satisfied, but not so much that you’d think him smug?

The answer will be found in a 75 year old book. And also in the book section of the site, where we formally meet the man, the myth, the legend. You can see more of that particular book here. Then, please do look at some of the other books I’ve highlighted.

Speed typing champion. Who knew there was such a thing? He’s doing that on a manual typewriter, of course, and that’s very fast. On my computer, just now, I took a typing test and hit 96 words per minute. That’s faster than the average typist, the site assured me, but still rather pedestrian compared to Mr. Hossfield. And I imagine any given modern computer can have its keyboard operated faster than a classic typewriter.

Sometimes his name is spelled Hossfeld. Whichever way he spelled his family name, I like to think the typo really annoyed him.

This evening I hung a shelf. This involved a hammer, a few nails and a few more holes. Also, there was one exasperated sigh. But I put a shelf up. Now, this part isn’t the amazing part. I am no expert, but I can claim a fair mastery of the common hammer and both of its two main uses. What’s most interesting about this is that I just eyeballed it. There are empty walls and stacks of things to hang because this is a process that takes time.

Too much time, truth be told. There must be ideas, considered, forgotten, reapplied and philosophized about. Sometimes, if the first 14 stages of the process are successful, the frame sits at the base of the wall for a time, for further in-depth consideration.

Then, and only then, if you find the right item for the right patch of wall, you have to measure everything. There’s the distance from the left corner — this one most come first for some reason I don’t understand — and then from the right side. Equidistance must be preserved, or if further displays are warranted, steps must be taken to allow for an appropriate spatial relationship of multiple framed works. Then you have to figure out the height. Of course we’re not going to solve the timeless dilemma of what is truly eye level, but that’s running through your mind when you hang things. Also, does this thing need to be mounted in a stud? And is this nail the right weight?

Hanging thigs is a process, is what I’m saying.

Tonight, I just said Looks about right, and started driving nails. It was a powerful and carefree feeling. Not so much a smugness, but a satisfaction.

And then I looked beyond the window, to the other side of the room. The same wall. The asymmetrical, blank wall.

This is going to take a while.

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11
Jul 17

This is going to seem sarcastic, but it isn’t

The Tour de France is on. I have turned on an inordinate amount of lights in the house. Chicken parm for dinner. I spent the evening sitting in my office recliner. Time of my life.

In my recliner, I was typing on a section of the site. Actually, I was thumbing through old books. And digging through a storage space for other books. I have a lot of books. These are my grandfather’s books. I’ve been flipping through them and reading them and enjoying the photographs and sharing them on the site. I have a big shelf of dusty old textbooks and agricultural reference books. I have a huge stack of magazines, and those will get included before too long. But, first, there’s the 1943 edition of Occupational Guidance:

There are seven more pictures just like that if you click the link above. (I’ll add a few more next week.) You can also see the growing collection here.

I also did some back end work on the site, but you aren’t interested in that and it is mostly just fun for me anyway. Also, much like people hold dear the goal of Inbox Zero, I have a similar goal for browser tabs. I’ve lately found it challenging to reach the goal numbers. (The goals are: four tabs on my computer, two tabs on my iPad and two tabs on my phone.) What, you don’t have goals like this?

The phone has reached two tabs. I’m down to just five tabs on my iPad. I was able to wipe a few off my computer, but there are still 10 open tabs to deal with. But I’m making progress. Time of my life.

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4
Jul 17

Happy Fourth

Hope you had a lovely day of it, he said while waiting for all of his neighbors to stop demonstrating their mastery of a modern application of ancient chemistry. I don’t suppose it would do any good if I went out there and asked them to stop, since it is after 10 p.m., would it?

Anyway, we woke up, packed the car, had a nice little barbecue lunch with my mother and grandfather and got on the road. And there we stayed for the entire afternoon. It is a drive. And so here are some pictures, and all of them will age better than fireworks.

Since you like rainbows, here is one we saw on Friday, somewhere in Kentucky, or perhaps Tennetucky:

And this is probably, technically, the same rainbow. I find it hard to keep them straight, especially when I am moving around. It emerged from the same storm system so, at the very least, the two were cousins:

I was talking about genealogy yesterday, because my grandmother and I were reading old names and dates and such on Sunday. She was sharing pictures, and here are two of them. This is my paternal great-grandfather, a man I never knew:

This picture hangs on a wall at my grandparents’ house. Its one of those things you pass by and don’t really know until you ask about it, I guess. I know exactly four things about the man. But, The Yankee says she sees where I get my hair. She has said about that man’s son, my grandfather, and she’s usually right about most everything, so it is a safe bet.

On the same side of my family, this is my other paternal great-grandfather:

My grandmother, his daughter, believes our hero is the young man on the right. He died before I turned three, so I don’t have any memory of him, or his wife, my great-grandmother, who died just a bit later. I do, however, see a few particular pictures of them a lot. They are an older couple, he has a flattop and she also looks just so. They are handsome and they look kind and welcoming. That’s the man I see in my mind’s eye. But this guy, with the wide hat, he looks like an interesting fellow too.

I wonder what we’d think of people we know if we’d had the chance to meet them in some other place in their lives …

Meanwhile, this is a time-traveling hipster:

The caption says this is a sesquicentennial anniversary for a Tennessee county, and that the photo was taken in 1959. The book was published at the turn of this century and, thus, the only logical conclusion is that this man is a time-traveling hipster.

Truly, that’s the last great frontier of Internet conspiracy theories.

Anyway, back to today. The view while driving back to the house, somewhere in southern Indiana:

Allie is a great traveler, but this drive gets to everyone after a while:

There is a great deal of scenery to enjoy in the trip. First there are hills and pine trees and the occasional hardwood of Tennessee, and then all of the trees of Kentucky. In the last third of the trip:

All the barns and corn and silos and corn you can enjoy. And I do enjoy the views a great deal.

Traffic was light. Everyone was where they needed to be. It only rained for about half an hour and we got home just in time to unload the car, have a late dinner and watch today’s stage of the Tour. Tomorrow, it is back to work and email and journalism and recording things and getting back to the routine, here, as well. Meanwhile, there’s always Twitter and Instagram for you.