Trees
Category: tPA 5
Veteran’s Flags
“The women’s lacrosse team did a fine job”
Lighting the Living Room
As I mentioned, I really want to make some progress on making the living room more welcoming. We ordered the second couch a couple of months ago, so by next month we should have it. I couldn’t wait to improve the lighting, though, because Syracuse winters are so terribly dark and grey.
It only took five days and around $300 to install the track. It started out innocently enough: just a little L-shaped track above the two couches which I plan to arrange in a L. Then, the L grew into a U so that I could get some light down where I’m planning to have the cabinets for all the records currently residing in white boxes. By the third day, it seemed obvious that I should remove the track I had installed on the wall above the turntable and move it to the ceiling completing the large gallery circuit around the perimeter of the room. Yet another wish fulfilled. My living room can now be lit like a gallery.
On the fifth day, I installed a Lutron Maestro dimmer because the standard three-way dimmers just seem wonky. Now, when you enter the room the lights sort of slowly come up to a glow. Not sure how permanent the paper lanterns are going to be, I might design some hanging fixtures eventually. But for now, the room glows pretty nicely. It’s wonderful to watch the sun go down listening to my Magnepans.
Leonard
Picked up Leonard in the Twin Cities. Krista drove around with him buckled in the back seat of her Kia for a long time. Finally pulled him out of the basement for this halloween, but forgot to post a photo. The children were quite polite to him.
Minnesota Memories
I was researching Harvey Ellis a bit yesterday, and found some strange confluences. Ellis was involved in the design of several buildings in Minnesota, though what brought me to him was his inlay/design work with Gustav Stickley in Syracuse. Apparently, Ellis designed a dormitory for the Farm School in St. Paul (now University of Minnesota) in 1887, and I was trying to figure out where it was. As near as I can figure, it was destroyed probably not long after it was built, replaced by a couple of other dormitories (Brewster and Dexter Hall) that were also destroyed before the 1950s. I have really fond memories of the St. Paul Campus where I studied rhetoric. It was moved to Wesbrook Hall on the Minneapolis side, and rebranded Writing Studies just before I dropped out.
Ellis had nothing to do with Wesbrook, but he apparently had a hand in Nicholson Hall next door where the writing center was located. I always liked that building, it was really full of light. He also was a designer for Pillsbury Hall, around the corner, one of the oldest surviving buildings on the campus. Eventually, after several other stops, Ellis ended up in Syracuse too. I’m looking forward to finding out more about him. A Minnesota historian has written a rather difficult to locate book about Ellis and I’ve ordered a copy.
In other Minnesota news, I was surprised to see a story on Faribault Woolen Mills on the NBC news last night. I was suprised to find out it had closed in 2009. Krista and I had toured their factory store somewhere around 2007, and wanted to buy something but really couldn’t afford to. Locals have purchased the factory, just before the equipment was to be shipped overseas to Pakistan. They are currently employing 35 people, and hoping to expand next year. I went ahead and advanced ordered one of their revival blankets. I’m looking forward to that as well.
It dawned on me that Minnesota was the only place that I have really chosen to live. Most other locations have been happy or not so happy accidents, but I consciously chose to live in Minnesota.
Violence is for the birds
I’ve not been able to make it through a James Bond film for the last few years. They are just too brutal, too violent. I miss the stylish Bond, where taste supersedes action. Oddly though, I’ve been listening to Bond film soundtracks. The difference between David Arnold’s throbbing soundtrack to Casino Royale and Burt Bacharach’s soundtrack to the faux-Bond Casino Royale is jarring. The latter film is so fun, and while listening to the former I just feel pummeled. Critics do call the new Bond “stylish” but if this is style, you can have it as far as I’m concerned. Soundtracks are integral to the Bond franchise, carefully reinforcing the brand at critical moments.
Sometimes, film music is inseparable from the drama of the moment , such as the shrieking violins in the shower scene of Hitchock’s Psycho. In other cases, such as the Bond films, the soundtrack can be playfully ironic. John Barry’s score for Goldfinger with its brash brass layers on not simply a commentary, but a commentary on style. My difficulty with the latest Bond isn’t simply the violence though, it’s also the constant sense that I’m being lead through the eyes, ears, nose and throat to be told what to feel. And I really don’t want to feel violent. It’s simply not a world I want to inhabit, and yet it’s polyannaish and impossible to avoid the presence of violence. Why do some modes of violence in reproduction seem important and “real,” others gratuitous, and still others, diverting and almost charming?
I’m beginning to think that music has a lot to do with it. In most cases , even though it purports to be an incidental background, the soundtrack tells us how to feel. It’s not simply an affectual nudge. Music can be a narrative element that pulls you through something. Or, in the case of Psycho the soundtrack music almost physically create a tear— an extreme case of what Roland Barthes labeled as punctum. This sort of extreme affect/effect is by its very nature contrived as artifice. Music is in actuality primarily incidental both in the sense that it is a part of a physical territory we happen into, but also in that it helps isolate temporal incidents of daily life.
I want so many moods and then I want so many more
Cars and tape decks carve eternal between my worlds
Windshields are like TV screens and I’m not involved at all
My entertainment takes me everywhere, nowhere at all
Everywhere, nowhere at all.My soundtrack tells me what to think of what I see
Interpretation by the music, and not by me
I don’t point myself anywhere where I can’t turn away
I’m only going places, I never mean to stay— I never mean to stay
I don’t intend to stay.Soundtrack, Thin White Rope, Exploring the Axis (1985)
I’ve written recently about my experiences/perceptions of nature growing up. So, when Krista and I watched Hitchcock’s The Birds last weekend it seems a given that it would push my buttons. What I hadn’t counted upon, though, was how the lack of a soundtrack made watching the film far more powerful than I remembered. The film, in a lot of ways, simply doesn’t make any sense. Birds start violently attacking people. There is no rhyme or reason, no explanation. A couple of characters in the film offer hysterical explanations for the violence, such as it is surely a sign of the apocalypse. But the violence escalates without pattern until it ultimately just stops.
Because there is no soundtrack at all except a few electronic bird sound effects and snatches of truly incidental music. The real score for the terror is silence. Silence is perhaps the most terrifying thing of all.
Walls of Words
When I read a short review piece by Brian Dillon this morning linked by Mark Woods, I realized that I had achieved a lifelong goal. I am now, without question, a dropout. It was hard to get past the first few sentences:
What mode or degree of attention does photography demand, or deserve, today? It sometimes seems the photograph as such is no longer really with us: suborned to contemporary art practices for which mediumistic integrity is beside the point, dispersed in myriad online quotidia that flummox efforts at a cult-studs overview, the medium meanwhile a decade and more past its heyday as gallery-bound pretender to painting’s spectacle and presence. And yet criticism carries on much as if photography were still parsable in terms of the old problems.
The photography that Dillon speaks of here is photography as an institutional or industrial (as in “art industry” or “culture industry”) practice. It’s a curious way to start a book review, steeped in academic jargon— but, after all, the books under review are targeted at precisely that sort of academic (or pseudo-academic) audience. Photographic practice has perhaps never been more omnipresent, as the glowing waves of cell-phone cameras at any social or political event easily demonstrates. But does it deserve attention? Uh, yes— is the only sane answer for a general audience. But for an academic audience, perhaps not. Glad I’m a drop-out from all that.
Driving to the hardware store for some track to continue the current “light the living room” project, I was listening to the Elson Lecture by Elizabeth Murray. Murray begins by talking about listening to a very intelligent man discussing the relevance of painting using terms like modality and temporaneity saying that she wondered to herself why he felt the need to use such terms to isolate and distance himself from his audience, in effect erecting an academic wall around himself when what he was actually saying was easily understandable and might be restated in plain language. As I read Dillon’s review of three books, which I do have some interest in, I had to ask myself why he felt a book review was the place to exercise his vocabulary regarding pointless debates. Murray suggested that, in the case of painting, people would still be doing it “until the rubble of civilization was bouncing.” I agree.
Of course, Dillon sidesteps his opening cynicism by lauding Tod Papageorge’s Core Curriculum (Aperture, 2011) as the indispensable antidote. Not the first rave of that one I’ve read, but I’m not moved to read it yet. James Elkins’s What Photography Is (Routledge, 2011) sounds a lot more interesting, though Dillon pretty much pans it. It dwells on Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes’ seminal (though a bit shopworn) text. Barthes book is yet another of those books that has launched a thousand misappropriations and misreadings. I’d be far more curious about Elkin’s correctives than Dillon’s.
But, given that I need to install more light in the living room to look at such wonderful recent acquisitions such as Robert Bergman’s A Kind of Rapture — a truly amazing piece of photographic / literary work (and a terrific corrective to Alec Soth’s pretentious twaddle)— I’ll have to put off Elkin’s book for another day. As for Dillon’s essay, well, I think I’d much rather listen to Toni Morrison reading her introduction to Bergman’s book again than comment further.
Now, back to that living room!
Halloween
The Nebraska State Historical Society has some wonderful photos taken of children and adults who are in attendance at various Halloween gatherings and parties. Because the state has a wide range of immigrant influences, European traditions regarding Halloween have often been localized cultural events. Of course, the traditions had to adjust a bit, as well. The pumpkin, for instance, replaced the English turnip as the gourd of choice when carving a jack-o-lantern. A lot of credit for Halloween’s popularity goes to the Irish.
The Anniversary Sink
For quite some time, I’ve been disgusted with the on-faucet water filters (Pur, Brita, etc.) that we’ve used. They always start to leak about a week after you buy them, and I’d estimate that we’ve bought and thrown away at least ten of them in the last three years or so. A couple of weeks ago, there was a failure of a different sort. I installed yet another new faucet filter and found that the spout on the faucet itself had failed. When the filter was engaged, the faucet turned into a sprinkler. I fixed it with duct tape, but I hatched a new plan.
The problem with plumbing makeovers is that they usually involve starting a project only to have ten ancillary problems crop up— touch one thing, and other things break. When I opened the cabinet under the sink, I was horrified to find that there weren’t even any water shut-off valves there. To fix the faucet, I would have to shut off the water to the house. Another issue with faucet replacement is that they sometimes refuse to come off the old sink, and laying on your back stuffed into a small hole does not encourage calm contemplation of stubborn nuts. Last time I did one of these projects (for my mother) I ended up removing the sink from the counter so that I could get the damn faucet off.
Digression: My second vocation (after darkroom worker for a string of photographers) was a night-shift plumbing salesman. I worked my up to plumbing manager under the tutelage of a couple of retired plumbers. I liked it, because you could enjoy the fun part of the job— troubleshooting and solving problems— without ever crawling under a sink or smashing your knuckles. Eventually, I worked my way up to assistant manager of the hardware store until I was fired one Christmas eve… but that’s another story.
I wanted to be smart about this little problem. Why not just replace the works? It was all original equipment on this forty-five-year-old house. I hated the sink, but without redoing the cabinets the options were limited. I located a deeper stainless sink though, and it was only around $140. The farmhouse sink will have to wait for another day.
A new single control faucet with pull-out sprayer (perfect for when I get around to that undermount farmhouse setup) was only about $80. What surprised me though, was that the silly drinking water faucet (that I could hook up to an undercounter water filter) was almost as much. There are cheaper ones available, but I hate crawling under counters so I wanted brass instead of plastic. The most expensive part to be replaced though, was the garbage disposal.
At first I thought I would just reuse the old Kitchen Aid disposal, but Krista was really taken by the POS display for the new quiet Insinkerator disposals. I always had great luck selling the “badger” disposals (the lower line), but when I looked at the Amazon reviews it seems as if the newer versions get far more mixed reviews. The new double-chamber sound insulated ones get raves, though. So I bought one. It was only a little splurge I guess.* Good thing though, because the old disposal was some sort of snap-lock arrangement that I still haven’t figured out how to disconnect from the old sink.
With new valves and such, the total for the whole job came to about $600. You can hardly hear the disposal with your head next to it. As an interesting side-benefit, it even quieted down the dishwasher. The job went off with only a couple of hitches. First, plastic and brass fittings just don’t like working together. I had to adapt from 3/8 to 1/4 for the drinking water faucet and the brass coupling leaked severely until I switched to plastic ferrules. Then, I discovered that I had left out a washer for for the spray hose causing it to leak when the sprayer was activated.
It was a mystery to me how I overlooked this. There was much cussing and crawling on my back to locate the barely visible problem area. Naturally, it was now after five pm, when I should have been going out to dinner with my lovely wife on our ninth anniversary (of our first date, not our marriage— we tend to celebrate this moment more). I had to go to a hardware store because I just couldn’t bear the thought of spending the night sinkless.
I met up with a nice former plumber who helped me troubleshoot the problem. Naturally, this washer was a totally non-standard part which was different on every faucet. He suggested using an o-ring of the approximate size of the connection. His solution worked, and we ordered pizza for our anniversary dinner.
Last night, the night after, Krista pulled a package from our bed riddled with teeth marks. “Was this what you were looking for?”
Uh, yeah.
The culprit.
* It might be surprising to some that deaf people are remarkably picky about sound. Extraneous noises like garbage disposals are amplified by hearing aids, making it really difficult to communicate over them.
Joshua Vogel
Stumbled on this video and article. Haven’t been over that way yet, and might just have to. The arc seems familiar. The same thing has happened to me: reevaluating one’s relationship to life with the passing of a parent. When you live facing up to death around you, which I have for the past decade or so, it changes you in drastic ways. Some things just don’t seem quite as important as they used to. Other things, forgotten things, become far more serious.