27
Oct 21
Oct 21
Mrs. Cooley would be proud
I took this photo yesterday of a westerly-facing tree outside of our television studios and didn’t share it with you. Shame on me. The light was catching it so nicely, and everything. So here’s the westerly-facing tree.
Trees, of course, face all directions. That’s the sort of useful information that you keep coming back here for, I know.
And also this insight, a phrase I coined today, but a feeling that has long been on the mind of any expert who has ever talked about their craft to a non-expert.
Shortcuts used shouldn’t always be the shortcuts taught.
It had to do with a conversation about writing, and the root of it is the cliche, you have to know the rules so you can break the rules.
Or “learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist,” which is often attributed to Pablo Picasso, or “know the rules well, so you can break them effectively,” as the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso supposedly said. (And hasn’t the web ruined us on standalone quotes? I no longer believe anyone said anything, but that everything was said by Abraham Lincoln quoting Calvin Coolidge.)
I’m pretty sure I learned the theme from my algebra teacher, of all people. Learn the rules to break the rules. And that’s what algebra was like for me.
How I got through calculus and trig is something of an open mystery.
More time in the television studio tonight. It was the sports crew shooting tonight, and those shows will start to come online tomorrow.
Here are the news shows from yesterday, though. All the local that is news, and all the news that is local …
And the Halloween-themed show that I teased here yesterday …
Why do trees face all directions? It’s a question of survival to be prosperous. Tree branches grow to give the most leaves the most light, because light means they can run photosynthetic process. The rest is us being misanthropomorphic.
26
Oct 21
Oct 21
A day that always seemed difficult, but was actually easy
I went to the recycling center to drop off some expired fluorescent bulbs. (Our closets have fluorescent bulbs. I have questions.) There are … one, two, three, four, five recycling centers in this county. Of those five, only one accepts this sort of light bulb. It is not our usual recycling center, which is to say, the closest one. It is three miles away from that one, an improbable nine-minute drive. So maybe it’s the next closest, but when I got down there today …
Always read the website yourself, that’s what I’ve learned. And if you ever meet anyone in charge of the solid waste management office, ask about these seemingly arbitrary Open/Closed days.
So I went to Lowes, for the second time in three days, because that’s the way it works. Lowe’s is 6.4 miles and 12 minutes from that recycling center. And today I needed to pick up a toilet seat. Because I broke the one I’d installed just two months ago.
Whoever heard of that?
I walked down the correct aisle, around a slow-moving couple who were deliberately deciding among off-white bathroom fixtures, and found all of the toilet seats were blocked by a scissor lift. Eventually a person wearing the “I work here” red vest and the “but please don’t ask me about it” expression walked by. I asked her if she could move the store equipment. We discussed the issue and she found that what I wanted was only partially blocked, so she didn’t have to find a person to move the lift. She squeezed in between that and the aisle and grabbed the thing. That was easy.
Paid, walked out, thought about it and grabbed those light bulbs. Turns out Lowe’s accepts those for recycling. That was easy, too. A theme emerges.
I had lunch with my friend, and a former student, Auston Matricardi. He watches things, talks to people, assembles sentences and applies punctuation for a living.
He’s a sports writer. A pretty great one, too.
And the building behind us there is where I work, and where we met. He was also a sports broadcaster. He’s one of those people that’s capable of doing whatever is before him.
The sort that makes the rest of us jealous.
Videos from the studio … here’s the morning show. They talked to a tarot card reader. And they got a lot of tarot cards read. Then they visited a haunted house, and that part is highly amusing.
It’s a fun show, all new people, the crew is largely new, and they are coming into their own nicely.
And this show is brand new, one of two the student television station has launched this semester, a fun look at students making films.
And today they shoot the news shows. One, which I’m teasing here, had a Halloween theme.
You’ll see that tomorrow.
This evening I got home and removed the new broken toilet seat and installed the new new one. So scarred am I from recent projects that I feared the worst, but it was simple: remove two plastic screws on the old one and line up the parts for the two plastic screws of the new one.
I wonder if I can get my money back on a busted seat which is still well within the store’s general policy time. We’ll find out Thursday! (Update: I did.)
But there will be much more here tomorrow. Who knows what theme it will hold. Don’t miss out!
