….I post another photo of a sunset!
….and….
Stop me before….
Tag: photography
Move over, Gaugin
Aloha
And the judges say…
Thankfully I was not judged during my performance.
Leaf
I’d just as lief. Grammar on the ground. Who says “lief” isn’t a word? As boldly as being healthily red while sitting on a piece of pavement. Yes.
2 Weeks of “Shoulda”
For the past 35 years, well….pretty much for my whole adult life, I’ve tried to use a few words very consciously: can’t, had to/have to (and variants), and should have/shoulda. The last breaks down into me telling you that you should do or say something. More insidiously we say this to ourselves.
In that vein, I realized I’m again spending far too much time on reading things I think I should, and not enough on what I like. This occurred right after I subscribed to a newsletter from the New York Times which twice a week will highlight some songs that are pretty salient and should be listened to, a topic I really care about. Yes, I appreciate the irony. Instead I spend several hours making sure I’m on top of geo-politics, cultural developments, science and technology, and all sorts of sociological things like economics and psychology.
In the past couple weeks a few things happened, but I don’t even have photos to show for it because most aren’t fun and some are ideas, not physical things lending themselves to the snap of a shutter: an impending death in our family; a friend having serious surgery; discovering that a minor roof leak isn’t so minor after all and requires a complete re-roofing from the rafters on up; and learning today that quite possibly an incredible amount of our personal data may have been stolen because of some third party company I’ve never heard of but which inexplicably has our complete health records including diagnoses, our complete financial stuff like credit cards and account numbers, and oh yeah, our Social Security numbers. Apparently health insurance companies use this company to do what they can’t because they’re too busy counting my money.
Sigh. I shoulda just posted a photo…
How green was my…
Sticking with the ten years ago thing, I saw this photo. It’s unretouched (though cropped). It really is that green. McConnell Springs is the neatest little park, barely one square mile if I recall properly. European settlers were here, damming a spring to power a mill. The park sits on the edge of an industrial park hemmed in by railroad tracks on the other side with residential developments beyond that. Yet inside the densely forested park you feel a calmness as you’re transported back to another century.
Sunny memories
I gardened better ten years ago. My beginning consulting years actually weren’t about consulting–I hired out contractually. Technically, I earned more than I had as a manager in a pill manufacturing plant, but it was tough to compare. On the one hand, individuals working freelance pay all of their own Social Security and Medicare. On the other, I got paid for every hour I worked, unlike being a manager when 50 and 60-hour weeks occurred. The best perk in 2014? A strict you-can’t-work-over-40-hours-per-week limit. Free to work those hours flexibly, I usually rolled into Friday with 36, meaning I took off around noon. Nice Friday afternoons with my wife, time to run those errands that need to occur during a business week, and time to tend the garden haphazardly.
I don’t like to garden much but I’m entranced with the idea you can grow things, especially useful things like food for humans or birds. The sunflowers were for the finches. Didn’t work at that well, and in 2015 I started real consulting, traveling all over the country and beyond. Ah well. At least I can pay to have someone else do it now.
Finland or Turkey?
You know you’re in the sauna and That Guy insists on pouring ladle after ladle of water on the hot rocks? Your ‘dry sauna’ experience is turned into a nostril-searing cross between a Turkish steam bath and the original intent of the high-temp Finnish experience? Yeah, that’s our past week or two here in Raleigh, NC. The photo above captures Tuesday the 16th when we were somewhere around 100 degrees and the relative humidity made you feel like a water-soaked towel had been removed from a vat of boiling water and then wrapped around your body. I’ve been in worse–I’m looking at you Kansas!–but this turns most days into hot temperature versions of Snow Days, especially when a thunderstorm might occur.
Why two fur-encased creatures would want to spend hours melting into the planks of the deck in this weather boggles my mind. In No Banners, No Bugles by Edward Ellsberg, the Rear Admiral opens his book of World War II ship salvage with a description of him and his crew attempting to raise ships in the Red Sea where the temperature is in the 120’s (Fahrenheit). He goes back to his apartment and the poor A/C box unit has only been capable of cooling to 92 degrees. Nevertheless, it raises goosebumps on him due to the 30-degree temperature differential. I felt the same when I walked into a house being cooled to about 78, 79. (Ellsberg’s book is surprisingly readable and would make a good movie. I am not much of a history buff, but this book really held my interest when I read it.)
Benny got smart a day or so later, and spent his days in the basement where the temperature never gets higher than 70-72. Charlie finally succumbed today. He spent the afternoon in my office right up until I said I was posting this. Apparently he’s shy? Embarrassed? Ambivalent?
Your graduation playlist!
[An update to my post which contained comments about the hits which were playing as I finished high school.]
As I prepared to graduate high school in 1972, the recent months had been kind, musically speaking. Eric Clapton as Derek & The Dominos had just clocked in with “Layla”. Graham Nash and David Crosby posted “Immigration Man”. The armed service brats who formed America had popped out two hits, “I Need You” and “A Horse With No Name”. (Name the damn horse! He’s taking you across a desert for crying out loud!) Paul Simon had a “Mother and Child Reunion” while “Sylvia’s Mother” was being pestered by Dr. Hook and his Medicine Show. Some newish guys–Elton John, David Bowie, Kenny Loggins, and Todd Rundgren–were starting to establish themselves.
Some songs make my playlist for personal history reasons, not so much because I really, really like them, but because I liked them enough that they were the background music to my life at that time: “Conquistador” by Procol Harem; “How Do You Do?” by Mouth & MacNeal; “I’m Movin’ On” by John Kay and Steppenwolf; “Sugaree” by Jerry Garcia; “Family Affair” by Sly & The Family Stone. Others I don’t remember having heard back then, but they sum up that time quite well: “Hallelujah” by Sweathog; “Baby Won’t You Let Me Rock n’ Roll You” by Ten Years After; “Move ‘Em Out” by Delaney & Bonnie; “In A Broken Dream” by Python Lee Jackson, an Australian group with Rod Stewart sitting in on the vocals; and Roberta Flack’s version of “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” (hauntingly slow and soft).
I’d like to go on and on, but it’s just some old guy talking about why he likes certain pieces of music. I remember the uncle of my ex-wife who had tables of old records in his barn. Every garage sale and estate sale he went to he would scoop up all the records. We’re talking stuff from the 1920’s through 1940’s mostly. He and I would “shoot the shit” for hours as he talked about “Minnie the Mooch” and all the other great music from back then. It’s fun to appreciate music through someone else’s love of it. Should anyone think there’s something worthwhile like that here, let me know. I don’t want to bore ya.
Meanwhile, here’s a mirror image of what I looked like when I was listening to those tunes, and the other 80 I didn’t mention:
