Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Friday / photo — Comments Off
04
Dec 20

The week with bad titles, part five

Today, a bit of wabi-sabi.

That’s a deck post. And wabi-sabi, Wikipedia tells you, is:

In traditional Japanese aesthetics, wabi-sabi is a world view centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of appreciating beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete” in nature.

Characteristics of wabi-sabi aesthetics and principles include asymmetry, roughness, simplicity, economy, austerity, modesty, intimacy, and the appreciation of both natural objects and the forces of nature.

I’ve written about this here before, about keeping some of the wear and tear in a house as artifacts of previous owners. Long ago we cleaned up the markings that noted all the kids that used to live in this house. We’ll get the rest of this place painted one day, when we feel we can safely get painters in. There are two or three bigger gouges that I’d like to correct, but there are nicks in some places which I want to keep. It’s part of the story of the place.

It’s all small and cosmetic, but keeping one or two things here or there might let you imagine the children playing here, the joy their family had, the lives they were living here. Oh, sure, those little corners of molding at the foot of a few doors, that’s from furniture moving in or out, or a zealous vacuuming session. The one place on the windowsill in one of the bedrooms, I have no idea what that was, but I want to hear the story, a story I’ll never know, and I hope it’s better than “We were moving out with our hops and dreams and clipped it with a dresser.” Some of these other marks might be from imaginary gun fights or adventurous car races or a time a grandmother — three generations lived here, together — just leaned a little too far to the right. Some of those should absolutely stay.

I bet those kids had a lot of fun on the deck out back. It’s held up by that post pictured above. And that post isn’t just a post. It could be a base for hide-and-seek or part of a doorway to the yard and the woods and the creek beyond. That big tall chunk of wood could have been anything.

And, to a kid, the imperfect and impermanent might be just the opposite.

Plus, you’ve got an entire national concept behind it. And, with wabi-sabi, you don’t have to replace things quite so often.

history / Indiana / photo / site / Thursday — Comments Off
03
Dec 20

The week with bad titles, part four

This area is rich in limestone. The campus is full of local stuff. Courthouses around the state feature stone that was ripped from the ground around here. The stone was the necessary ingredient for the move Breaking Away‘s subtext.

We watched Breaking Away when we moved up here. The Yankee had never read it. It’s still a fine film, and I wonder how townies feel about it. It still holds up, even if the locals would tell you there are some geographical problems. And I’m older now. Growing up it was a movie aimed at me, the child. Today I’m much, much closer to the dad’s age than the young kids who really make up the movie. The dad’s big speech, which probably raced right by me each time I saw it as a kid, really sank in differently that last time we watched it.

And it’s popular far and wide. Indiana’s limestone is what you see at the Empire State Building. The U.S. Holocaust Museum, the Federal Trade Commission, the National Archives, the Department of Justice, Wilson Center, the EPA, NOAA, the Department of Commerce and more, they all came from here. Federal courthouses, churches, college campuses across the country, tons of them feature Indiana limestone.

At the height of the industry, the state sent 14.5 million cubic feet of dimension stone to all of those projects, most of it coming from this region. It has certain attributes that make it both aesthetically pleasing and professionally easy to work with. Even today, those cutters quarry 2.7 million cubic feet of Indiana Limestone each year, and it generates about $26 million annually in revenue.

And it all started right here, or, rather just a few miles up the road. The first real digging of limestone in Indiana is the subject of this installment of my old and forgotten, and now remembered and almost completed historical marker project. I’m showing off all those beautiful painted signs in the county. I rode to all of them on my bicycle. This particular one is the second-furthest away from the house, in fact, so enjoy. Click on the image to see this particular entry.

The marker itself, which you can see by clicking over via the image above, is a bit removed from the location it celebrates. You can’t, in fact, see the old quarry (it failed in the 1860s) by road, or even from the bird’s eye view of Google Maps. But there’s some more local history sitting in the center of the park in that sleepy, small town, population 200. (Stinesville was laid out 28 years after the quarry began, which was when the rail line showed up. The post office arrived five years after that.) The bonus photo you’ll find in the post is of a locally important bell. It came from a church established in 1894, just 67 years after that first quarry was dug. The community saved the bell in 1995, and I bet there’s a story behind that which the web isn’t telling us, and it was put in that park in 2005. So it’s been there 15 years now. I wonder where it was for the 10 years it was being saved.

Oh, here it is, in a local historical newsletter, from 2006. It seems the church building has had several lives. First it was a congregation for Lutherans, and then it became known as the First Christian Church. It was badly damaged in a 1964 storm, though, and a few years later the church was sold to a private individual. All the contents were auctioned, including the bell. And then in 1995 the bell was going to go on the market again, but the community preserved it. Later, the church building, not made of limestone, was repaired, renovated and is now a private residence. Happy ending. And, in the summer of 2015, the last time the Google car came through, it needed a fresh coat of paint. I believe it’s had one since then, and now that I know what I’m looking for, I’ll check on it when I’m out that way again. But the lawn was well-kept! So, like all of us, it’s in progress.

If you’d like to see two county’s worth of historical signs and the places they’re highlighting, go to the main page.

journalism / links / podcast / Wednesday — Comments Off
02
Dec 20

The week with bad titles, part three

I forgot to include this here earlier this week. So, without prelude, give us the fancy old-fashioned banner.

I talked with Dr. Siering a week or so ago about pedagogy and remote learning and all these sorts of things that faculty and students are dealing with just now. It’s a good episode if you’re a faculty member or a student. (And you know they all stop through here.) It might be only for them. But, nevertheless, we’re covering all the bases.

On Topic with IU · On Topic with IU — Discussing remote teaching with the director of CITL

And now I have to go out and find a few more people to interview. Should be fun! What topics should we cover?

We haven’t filled out this space with other stories recently, let’s do that now.

Birmingham woman raising 12 kids after sister, brother-in-law die from COVID

Already raising seven biological children ranging in age from 2 to 17 as a working, single mother, the 40-year-old Birmingham resident’s last conversation with her dying sister in UAB Hospital about the arrangements for their kids was no longer hypothetical.

[…]

And her sister’s children are not without anxieties of their own, she said. On top of the grief of losing both their parents, the children are reluctant to go outside out of fear of catching COVID-19, Francesca McCall said.

But all things considered, she said, “We’re doing OK. They have their [tough] moments at times, processing everything.”

The GoFundMe account has raised $40,000+ since that story was published.

These seem like charming people. Philly’s Four Seasons Total Landscaping dishes the dirt on the news conference heard ’round the world: ‘It was nothing we anticipated’:

The merchandise sales of Four Seasons Total Landscaping have taken on a life of their own. The conference room at their office has become a makeshift fulfillment center, as Siravo and the company’s 28 full-time employees take turns bagging orders and printing labels, starting at 6 a.m and racking up overtime hours working long into the night.

Partnering with half a dozen local vendors (all but one is located in the Philadelphia region), the company has sold over 35,000 orders for T-shirts, ugly Christmas sweaters, face masks — totaling $1.3 million in sales. (Much of the money will be used to pay back vendors, shipping costs, and more, Middleton said, making clear that Four Seasons won’t be putting $1.3 million in its bank account.)

[…]

In hopes of helping others during Four Season’s moment in the sun, Siravo said the company is participating in a Toys for Tots drive with St. Christopher’s Hospital. Through Dec. 11, visitors can drop off unwrapped toys at the office in exchange for a Four Seasons sticker. Separately, Siravo said the company is also collecting coats, hats, socks, and other cold-weather clothing to donate to local charity.

This looks like a nice place to visit. The Munich Atelier where stained glass comes to life:

The Mayers oversee the business from a series of sunny, art-filled rooms on the top two floors of the building. Dozens of warrenlike workshops and ateliers crowd the four floors beneath — here, workmen restore historic stained-glass windows and mosaics, while others make contemporary works. The labyrinthine basement archive houses an extensive collection of vintage stained-glass works.

The only problem is that he’s going to look like Carlton Banks for the rest of his life. The hardest-working man in show business:

Yet as much as the world equates Ribeiro to Carlton, the years following The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air may have revealed more about the man—his persistence, his versatility, and his undeniability. If you let him tell it, for a while the role Ribeiro played so well was the role that held him back. “Imagine for a second you do a role so well that they tell you you’re not allowed to do anything else ever again because they can’t believe that you’re not that guy,” he says. But the ceiling Ribeiro hit as an actor forced him to develop other skills, which helped him emerge as one of the most versatile—albeit underrated—performers in Hollywood.

I’ll never understand. You’d think casting agents and directors would be … imaginative.

More on Twitter, check me out on Instagram and more On Topic with IU podcasts as well.

photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
01
Dec 20

The week with bad titles, part two

‘Tis the season. ‘Tis the season. Right?

I’m something of a purist with this. The season begins in December, after Thanksgiving if you’re desperate. Respect, as my wife says, the turkey.

But I’ve seen stores where the season begins before Labor Day. And this is right out. Respect, I say, the Halloween candy. And, you know, the joys of autumn.

Anyway, we have put up trees. Because cheer was needed, and how would the cats react?

We have four trees. The cats are fine with them. Minimally interested, actually. It’s odd. They’re into everything, using a sort of one-two, high-low concept. The two cats are like toddler-adolescent versions of the old Ali wind up punch. One is always bluffing for the other. It’s a study in discipline and small group communication, and it happens every day. Each distracts for the other so that one can get where we don’t want them to be, or chasing plastic or food, or the plastic which they seem to think is food. They can hardly be bothered to be in the trees.

I said we can’t put out the good ornaments because these monsters will destroy them. About once a night a cat will go under one of the trees. And you’ll see them sniffing around it then. Once, Poe was goofing around in the lowest branches, probably trying to figure out how he could use them to ambush his sister.

Still, we can’t put out ornaments.

Two are smaller things out by the front door. One has all white lights in the foyer, and that multi-color guy is in the living room, and I rather like the reflection it casts on the television screen.

Poseidon is back under that tree and rustling around it as I write this. So, no ornaments. Definitely adds some cheer. And happy December!

hobby / Monday / photo — Comments Off
30
Nov 20

The week with bad titles

I’m sure this is some sort of king of the kitchen thing. Some sort of dominant cat of the kitchen island thing. Something I shouldn’t indulge — especially since he likes to jump to attack, who knows if he’s developing a penchant for leaping down to attack.

But he looks handsome doing it, so I guess that makes it OK.

Anyway, it’s Monday, so we check in on the cats and, as you can see, Poseidon is doing just fine. That’s a new posture for him. I hope it doesn’t take. That’s my breakfast and lunch seat, not his.

I will let him take naps in it at other times, however.

Phoebe is great, too. As you might know — or, if you have pussycats in your pad, you might have instituted something like — our failed rule about cats on the counter. Poseidon we’ll just shoe-shoe him off a counter. Or we’ll spray him with a nice little water bottle — which he actually loves, so you see, failed rule. Phoebe, however, we just pick her and hold her, which is a fate worse than nail clipping. But! We have the world’s greatest jailhouse jaguars and legal lions. They quickly found the loophole.

And we let this stuff slide. Any animal that can do the leg work on something like that deserves your approval.

Anyway, another Monday, another week. This is usually where I put something about the weekend’s bike ride(s) and so on. We did ride, a simple, basic, usually kind of ride, and it was cold. So I took no photos because retrieving my camera from within several layers of kit and two pairs of gloves seemed too risk at the time. But it was a nice ride.

And then I also worked on one of my little wood projects:

I’m toying with the idea of making a bowl. Everything, but the bottom, is coming along nicely. I’l; figure it out. In the meantime, it gives me a reason to stand in the garage next to a familiar bit of pareidolia.

It’s a perfectly natural phenomenon, seeing faces in things. It’s only weird if they answer you back.

Not to worry. Mr. Garagey is more the silent type.