Recovered from an old travel log:
Tuesday, October 24, 2000:
“[My youngest younger brother] and Andrew - the chickens of the sea! And I wish they would drown!”
“We’re on our way to a Monkey Forest! We’re setting [you can guess who] free!”
I was so snarky when I was little. Of course, I’m not that way, anymore. I’ve been reformed (mind-cleansed, brainwashed, blackmailed . . . whatever).
I’ve been invited to join a book club. I’m wary, as I’ve never joined a book club, only had my own. The current book is Reading Lolita in Tehran. We were scheduled to meet on this past Tuesday. The meeting was cancelled at the last minute because, apparently, no one had finished reading the book, including the person who had selected it. It was just as well as by Tuesday night I was nursing what has become a hellacious cold.
I’m interested in meeting this group — I know only one person, my neighbor Lisa, the person who invited me to join. I’m hoping we will reschedule before I forget everything I want to say about the book.
If you haven’t read it, it’s a bleak work of nonfiction. More than anything, it made me want to re-read The Great Gatsby and Lolita, two novels to which much content is devoted in the book. I like the concept of the book — a memoir in books, as it is described. The concept alone reminds me of a bit of my own fiction I’ve set aside, more of a memoir in outfits, I guess, the stories linked by my ridiculous ability to recall in every major life event what I and what others wore. I may pick the piece up again; it’s had time to rest and breathe, perhaps it’s time to see if I can bring it to the final pages.
What is it about book clubs, I wonder? For years my friend Judy and her husband have been involved in a couples book club. Rarely does the entire club read the book. I really don’t get the point, unless it’s like another friend I have whose group of girlfriends have Bunko nights and rarely actually play the game.
Maybe it would better for me to relive my college days and enroll in a literature course where the reading is required and everyone shows up for class. Do these still exist?
In addition to Leadership Charlottesville, I’m engaged in other activities where I’m learning about leadership. One unexpected source of this is with my church. Recently, I was asked to be a confirmation sponsor for a friend of my son’s. Our first meeting with the youth leaders introduced the sponsors to the idea of being “lamplighters” for these young people. The concept of leading by example, providing “light” to show the way, all while encouraging the youth to make their own decisions is all at once encouraging and daunting.
We’re being encouraged to share our personal stories, as they relate to our faith, of course, but also to share our lives with our confirmands, as a way of providing them an example other than that of their parents, of adults living lives where the church plays a role. It’s new and different challenge for me, as a leader. The parallels are interesting, though, and this new responsibility is making me think more about leadership roles and the way we grow, fall or step into them, sometimes unexpectedly.
I’ve been decidedly under the weather. Wednesday’s session of Leadership Charlottesville was a real effort for me to attend. Battling a cold and armed with tissues, cough drops and Dayquil, I showed up, determined to participate to my full capability.
This session’s focus was media and communications. Since my field of work is public relations, much of the content was quite familiar, but interesting to me all the same. It’s always interesting to learn about a local market’s approach to public relations, get advice from newspaper, television and radio professionals about pitching the local media and gain tips for on-camera interviews. We met at the Charlottesville Newsplex and spent the afternoon in session that covered traditional media, new media and interviewing.
The new media session was of particular interest to me. Speakers Waldo Jaquith and Sean Tubbs talked about blogging; what it is, who is doing it, and what effect it has on journalism and news in general. Sean covered the topic of podcasting — a concept growing in popularity and possiblities.
The entire day was very informative for the group, I think. As we’re thinking about ways to lead in our community, and ways we can support and drive results for our efforts in our civic programs or nonprofit organizations, using the media to gain exposure for anything we’re passionate about is important to understand. Our program director made a comment to me at the break about how I probably wasn’t hearing anything I didn’t already know; it’s more about context — while I may be very familiar with media and communications strategies and the process involved in achieving results, I’m still learning Charlottesville, and that is a topic I value very much.
Sorry this is late, but better late than never... right? Good, glad you let that one slip, I'll try not to let it happen again. I told you I was working on New Orleans pictures... well I am, but today's clouds needed some lovin, so I hooked a brotha up.
Three dollars for ninety minutes? That comes out to three and a third cents per minute.
Well, that decides it. I was cheated. They should have paid me to watch that movie. I’m sorry, but I simply cannot condone sacrificing character development for plot and action scenes. Angel had exactly three scenes, one of I’d already seen because it was released early! And in three whole scenes he had, what, two lines - one of which, I may add, was little more than fodder for Storm? And they couldn’t even get Colossus right! I mean, I’m not a major comic book fan, but, honestly, do your homework and tell the actor to do a Russian accent (even a bad one would have been better than none at all!). Yeesh. The worst part is that Rogue - who I liked, even though she was “wussified” in the movies - did not do anything that you wouldn’t have expected her to. If you know the basic premise of the movie and Rogue’s situation, then you know what she’s going to do. No surprises. No really deep theme, or unexpected reversal. Not even a confrontation with Iceman. She acts just like the two-dimensional character they made her into.
The only reason to see this movie is Hugh Jackman, because he is awesome as Wolverine. Too bad they couldn’t do as much for Scott, Jean, Professor Xavier, Rogue, Colossus, Leech, Angel, Juggernaut, Beast, or anyone else who appeared in the movie except for Iceman, Magneto, and Storm. In fact, like the Matrix sequels, this movie only works because the minor characters do an excellent job of getting their points across despite the unfortunate lack of dialogue. I knew what was going on in Angel’s mind, even if he didn’t say anything. Same with Madrox. In my opinion, the movie would have been better if they had just cut out the main story arc and focused on those characters. Then again, the movie would have been better if they had cut out the main story arc and focused on the characters. At all.
I am not generally a critical person. I will usually like movies that other people don’t, simply because I focus on the good points and ignore the bad ones. X-Men 3, however, like the Matrix sequels, is just uncategorically bad. For people who like mindless action and no character development, it’s a stunning success. For those of us who like our characters round, it’s a spectacular failure.
I want those ninety minutes of my life back.
I just got off the phone with a mother who called me after finding her daughter up at 2 AM pondering whether she’s going to apply to UVa under the early decision plan. She’s a smart girl in an IB program here in Virginia. She’s sure to have plenty of colleges interested in her, but she’s scared that she must apply early to UVa to have a chance in the process due to what she perceives to be low standardized testing and a GPA just shy of the top of the class.
Some critics of Harvard, Princeton, UVA and Delaware’s move to do away with early admission say that one of the reasons (lessening stress) is foolish. They say that the college search is stressful anyway and that doing away with early admission just pushes the stress back two months. They seem to be ignoring the stress of the order of the process.
The traditional college search can be seen as a number of steps.
1. A large list of potential schools is drawn up using guide books, internet searches, and meetings with counselors.
2. Mom, Dad and the student embark on a whirl wind college tour, visiting so many campuses in one week that schools are recalled by parking situation: the one that had the parking garage, the one that had the parking lot, and the one that had no parking.
3. Applications are organized, spreadsheets made, essays written, transcripts requested, etc. Packages are carefully handed over to the post office clerk who unceremoniously tosses it into a bin. Images of crinkled pages make Mom cringe. The wait begins.
4. Decision letters arrive from colleges. Letter carriers are stalked, online applications accounts are checked compulsively.
5. The student lays all the decision letters out on the kitchen table and mulls over choices.
6. A deposit is mailed to one lucky college.
Early admission moves the 5th step of the process up to #3. So, as students are starting the hardest academic year of their career, ascending to the leadership positions in their clubs and activities, and navigating the application process, they are also forced to make a decision that will affect the next four years of life (and the rest of life, if you think about it). This seems like a horrible time to be making such a decision, especially without knowing all the options available.
The same woman who called me talked about her son, a UVa alum, who applied early to another school, which had been his top choice. He was deferred and while hoping for an acceptance from that school, submitted regular decision applications elsewhere (including Virginia).
When decision letters came, he went for a second round of visits to schools. During those trips, he realized that UVa was the right place for him and sent his deposit in. Five months isn’t a long time in the grand scheme of things, but the difference between October and April is significant in the senior year of high school.
New York City
I’m hanging out in New York City today with the wife and little one. We are staying at the Marriott on the east side which is only about half a mile from 30 Rockefeller center, so I went over to the Today show with the intention of trying to get the baby on TV. However, the place was mobbed because Janet Jackson was playing, so I saw a little bit of her and headed back. Maybe I’ll try it tomorrow with the weekend crowd.
I grew up with the best dog in the world, a German Shepherd named Sali. She loved to chase cats, although she didn’t really know what to do when she caught them. We could just say the word “cat” and she would stand up, look around, and begin to whine. That’s why I love this picture so much. Either the cat is extremely stupid or incredibly brave. And it must have taken some serious discipline for those dogs not to go berserk.
How I would love to know the story behind that picture.
I had a roll of film developed today and on it were some images from when I took my helicopter ride over Charlottesville. This was shot with a nikn FE2 and an 8mm fisheye.
When I get back from home this weekend, I will scan and post some more images from New Orleans.
I've submitted this to a magazine, so if you wouldn't mind clicking on this little link and voting for it, I would really appreciate it.
Thanks!
Sorry for not posting the past few days. I am deep in harvest now and time, motivation, and energy are all short at the end of the day. My problem now is that I can’t even recall what I did on Monday. This is Thursday! Focus, Tim…
Okay here’s a quick synopsis of the week so far.
Monday: I welded up some new hooks for the Lugger tool (see earlier post). I broke one of the original prototypes which was probably 12 years old. The new ones are beefy and work great. I really need to market these things… Then I cleaned lugs. I used a pressure washer to loosen and a big bin of water to rinse with excellent and fast results. I was cleaning 5 lugs per minute on average. That’s pretty fast which is good as it is a miserable job. Then the Karcher brand pressure washer broke. I’ve used it like 3 times… I put the lugs out in the vineyard preparing for harvest on Tuesday.
Tuesday: Daniel and crew, 8 all together, picked 5 tons of chardonnay. This fruit was for me just as a change of pace (joke). They had to leave a lot of fruit on the vine due to rot, probably 25%. There are lots of kinds of rot. This year, at Cardinal Point anyway, there has been near perfect conditions for botrytis, or “noble rot.” Botrytis is a fungal disease that usually infects grapes in the late ripening stage. It can lead to complete loss of a crop. It is not all that bad though. On its own, botrytis infected grapes develop pleasing flavors and actually increase in sugar because the fungi dehydrate the berries. The pathogen can cause enological (wine making) problems, especially with red varieties, but with care, can actually make wines superior compared to unifected lots, hence “noble rot”. Botrytis, though can also lead to secondary rots, ripe rot, sour rot, and others, that smell and taste terrible. So, the fruit came in looking, well, bad, covered with brown, furry botrytis and who knows what else. It did not smell bad, though. There’s hope…Later I took the Karcher pressure washer back to Lowe’s and they gave me a new one!
Wednesday: We, Roberto and I, pressed out the Chardonnay picked on Tuesday. Many wineries sort their fruit before going pressing. This is a great concept. The idea is to pick out the bad clusters, berries, or bird nests before they are squished into wine. In practice this is can be tough to do. First, it is is difficult to find “sorters,” people who do the sorting. Usually a winery uses their picking crew to sort. I find this funny. You pay a crew to pick fruit and then ask them to take out the stuff you don’t want. I just ask them not to pick the stuff I don’t want. Plus, it’s tough to get people to sort when others need them to pick. More difficult is deciding what to sort. I know of a winery that sorted one bin out of six bins of fruit. On a lark, they pressed and vinified the ugly, sorted fruit. As you might guess by now, the “sorted” wine was far superior, full of flavor, rich with complexity. Don’t get me wrong. Sorting can be a great tool. In this case, though, with my botrysized chardonnay, it wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t know what to pick out without snorting and tasting every berry. The infected fruit is very tender and the first juice to come out of the press are these easily pressed grapes. In this instance, this first, “free run” juice was remarkably sweeter than the juice later in the press run. I honestly feel that if sorted, we could easily have second guessed ourselves and thrown away some great flavor. In short, we pressed the 5 tons. Also I picked up 1.25 tons of Traminette from Dave Dexter (for the Quattro) which we also pressed… In the afternoon between press runs, I scrubbed lugs. I couldn’t use the new Karcher pressure washer because the brand new replacement unit from Lowe’s came with a broken on/off switch. It was along day.
Thursday: Today was the last day of our Chardonnay harvest. We took off almost 7 tons to be divide between CP and another winery. Bob Hughes came out again, thankfully. I’d have been crushed by myself. The crew was so fast today. They were done by noon. Bob was picking up all the lugs. He worked his butt off. We had the luxury of dumping the lugs into bins (big plastic boxes, 4′x4′) right in the vineyard row. The purchasing winery guys then brought over a trailer that my feeble tractor’s front loader struggled to place the bins on. It occurred to me after filling about 6 bins that if my front loader broke that day, I’d be screwed. 800# boxes of pure grape mass with no where to go. Its true of a lot of the equipment. If the fork lift goes down, I can’t press or crush grapes. If the wine pump breaks, I really can’t do anything. Well, this time nothing broke and we sent the grapes off happily.
That afternoon I lost my wallet. I needed to rent a U-haul trailer to take some wine to a festival in Leesburg on Friday. I couldn’t do it because I didn’t have my wallet. I had to get the wine there Friday morning because in the afternoon and evening, I need to press some more chardonnay. I felt like the simplest thing was keeping me from getting anything done. It is frustrating and depressing. It wasn’t catastrophic like an exploding forklift, but it was as effective. I lost about three hours of productive time before finding the clever wallet hiding behind our hamper. I did find some long lost sunglasses, though.
Things have been a little crazy here at headquarters (uh, that's my place). It has been one of those months where you can hardly remember what has happened because we've been so busy. Suddenly, it's almost October, and I have no idea where September has gone. It's times like these where you have to celebrate the little things. In my case, that was a statistics exam (I haven't taken one of those since 1996!). Just taking it was cause for a celebration. So, Ryan and I busted out some bubbly (which was fantastic and not very expensive) and made some salmon croquettes (p. 564-565). Because you can use canned salmon, the recipe is easy and inexpensive, but you do miss something. We'd recommend roasting salmon filets before making this one if you want nice chunks of salmon (similar to lump crab in crab cakes). There will be at least two more occasions of celebrating the little things—two more stats tests to go this semester! Next on deck, we'll be giving German meatballs with caper sauce (p. 723) a try. You might remember that Lea made these as guest chef. They were fantastic, and I've been craving them. Until then, I hope you find time to celebrate a little of the mundane. 
The Second shot in the series.
Many of the people I encountered while I was walking through New Orleans had come down to find work. This man was one of those in between jobs.
Yesterday I managed to get 11 images scanned in three hours.
Because I am working rather hard on these images, I would really appreciate your thoughts as to how the look, make you feel, don't make you feel, think, etc.
The weekend is almost here, so be sure to enjoy the rest of the work week and allow yourself some time to get outside and enjoy the weekend. I am going to be home in Illinois, and I am going to try to enjoy myself, even if the weather is crappy.
I don’t wake up hungry. Taking a shower, moving around, lots of stretching in my bed and thinking about the day….those are all activities that usually take precedence over eating in the morning. Lately I’ve been packing a breakfast to take with me to work as I arrive there around 7:30 a.m and don’t want to eat until about 8:15. These have been fairly healthy breakfasts: yogurt with granola, fruit, a bagel; you get the idea. After running behind this morning, however, I decided to make a run to McDonald’s. Buying a cuppa joe was the sole purpose of this visit, so imagine my surprise when I heard myself ordering a McGriddle. For the unitiated to McGriddle eating, it’s eggs, bacon, and cheese sandwiched in between two pancakes that have built in pockets of syrup. When the lady asked if I wanted to make that a combo meal so I could get hash browns, that strange rectangular block of fried potatoes as well, I surprised myself even further by saying yes.
Okay, I guess I should confess that it wasn’t totally shocking to hear myself order these things. Truth be told, I went through a brief, yet intesne, obsession with the McGriddle. I even got my sister Sarah into them (sorry about that Sarah). I thought this was well behind me, but I guess that’s the crazy thing about obsessions-you never know when they may come back to haunt you.
As I sat down to listen to the news and eat the evil McGriddle, the first few bites were really good. Then I unfortunately started to noticed the strange boinginess texture of the eggs. And when I had to wipe some grease off my chin, I called it quits. To further remind myself that these McGriddles are nasty, nasty things, I looked up the ingredients of the McGriddles online. Here’s just the ingredients of bacon:
Bacon Cured with water, salt, sugar, smoke flavoring, sodium phosphate, seasoning [gum acacia, smoke flavor, maltodextrin, hydrolyzed corn protein, natural flavor (vegetable source), autolyzed yeast extract, hydrolyzed corn, wheat, and soy protein, modified cornstarch, contains less than 2% of [disodium guanylate, disodium inosinate, natural flavor (vegetable source), salt, succinic acid, xanthan gum], sodium erythorbate, sodium nitrite. Contains wheat and soybean ingredients.
Definitely not the wholesome goodness I strive for.
Then there are the ingredients to cheese, eggs, and the pancakes themselves: all evidence to keep me away. The McGriddle: not the breakfast of champions.
This is the first in a series of images I shot when I was in New Orleans last Thanksgiving. I am working on scanning images from 25 rolls of medium format film.
I wanted to share a wonderful podcast I’ve been listening to for a while. Coverville plays a wide variety of interesting covers, from Prince to Nirvana to Air Supply- He does themed shows, request shows, and shows that are random combinations of covers. Give it a chance and I think you’ll like it. You can also find it in iTunes, but you don’t have to have an iPod to listen to it.
I became a totally unpredictable worshipper this past weekend as I found myself “preaching” the message at all 4 of our services.
Some observations:
- talking at 4 services is a chore, I have a new appreciation for my pastor who does this each week
- following the LBW (Lutheran Book of Worship) feels so lifeless, especially when done back to back with our contemporary service which is filled with rhythm & motion & openness & risk takers
- we added several other unpredictable elements, such as communal communion, a powerful acapella solo performed on bended knee, a guided prayer meditation
- while stepping out of my comfort zone was extremely uncomfortable, it wasn’t as painful as I imagined it would be
the unpredictable worshipper (pdf)
The Baha’i House of Worship for Africa is outside of Kampala, Uganda. The site is in an area called Kikaaya Hill.* I came across two photos of this beautiful landmark on Flickr.com taken by Flickr user .Leili.
They are the most remarkable photos I’ve seen of it. Mostly, I think, because the photo’s I’ve see are
In this case, though, the photographer just wanted a picture. She got excellent clear light, and one has sky that looks like it might rain. Rain is often an exciting prospect in many parts of Africa.
This same lady has had the amazing privilege of not only visiting the House of Worship in Kampala, but also the one in New Delhi and spending a lot of time at Baha’i Holy sites in Haifa and Akka, Israel.
* if I ever get to name a road, as happens sometimes in the US when you live on a private drive that needs to be named so the Emergency Services can find you, I’m naming it Kikaaya Hill.
Hi.
I'm tired.
It's only tuesday.
I'm going home Friday.
I wish it were Saturdary.
Only a few days.
I'll see Sammy.
Sounds good.
Night.
I was pretty amused to come across this home made video for TMBG’s Alphabet Of Nations on Google Video the other day. The guy who made it used Google Earth to zoom around from country to country durring the first verse. So where did he make Google Earth go for West Xylophone? a mysterious island. And for the second verse, he power-points his way through flags for each country TMBG sings about. The West Xylophone flag? You guessed it: mine!
I really need to take time to write down the West X stories with Stickystacky, Princess Tiyamike and Sheriff Isobel!
This time of year is full of changes. The leaves, our clothes, our perspectives. UVA is making a change as well. While we aren’t exactly pioneers, I’m extremely excited about some of the things in store…
Stay tuned for an update.
Update: The press release is out, so it’s official: Early Decision will not exist in the UVA admission process next year!
The media has arrived…
Boyd Tinsley is in the Dave Matthews Band, who played at the new John Paul Jones Arena this past weekend on the grounds of The Univeristy of Virginia in their final show of their summer tour. I had the opportunity of going to the show to take pictures for the local newspaper I am working for. The paper comes out on Tuesday, so be sure to check it out to see a couple pictures from the show.
In other news, I am going home to Illinois this weekend! I get to see Sammy.
Listening to: Something about that Name - Sonic Flood
Wierd Al’s “White & Nerdy.” There’s at least 4 scenes that made me think of The Big Man.
I received a kind email from David Carnes, vineyard manager at Windham winery in Hillsboro, Virginia. David was dropping off wine for our mutually-used distributor on Friday and it was his first visit to Cardinal Point. In his email, referring to our architecture, he says “Cardinal Point has a hipness to it” and “Who can’t make a winery look pretty with money? There’s no challenge in that and the Napa look has been done to death.” I appreciate the comment because including my wine and vine work, I also did a lot of the construction. Indeed the whole family was involved. My brother is an architect in Charlottesville and he came up with the useful design and clever layout of our buildings. Sure, they’re just pre-engineered metal structures, but I think they’re understatedly cool. My sister Sarah, who runs all our business operations, has final say on interior design. My parents bought, installed, and maintain our flower boxes. They also just had our gutters fixed which were damaged by ice flows of the winery roof several winters ago. I built the tasting room bar, did a lot of the painting. This year I designed and built a canopy system over the terrace. I like it and think it fits our “industrial/pastoral” look.
There is a saying in the industry:”If you want to make a little money in the wine business, start with a lot.” Well, we are not paupers, but we, my family, started our winery with a lean business model by necessity. From the start we wanted to make a comfortable place to visit, but we knew that putting resources toward making the best wine we could was most important. Sure, I’m envious of deep-pocketed wineries, but I do like our little winery. (Cue violins). My family has been 100% behind this endeavor, my friends encouraging, our staff has been terrific, and the customers have kept it fun. I’m confident that eventually we’ll realize all the dreams I have for this place (Google Kroller-Muller Museum for insight). It’s going to take time, but it’s the journey not the destination.
On practical matters, Friday I took some berry samples from a viognier vineyard I’m getting grapes from. They look perfect and the fruit is slowly ripening which I prefer. Looks like we’ll pick that in two weeks or so. I’m getting ready for our own Chardonnay to come in next week, starting Tuesday. It was supposed to rain last night and today but so far so good, no rain!
Next weekend we are going to a big wine festival up in northern Virginia. It is causing lots of logistical problems. I’m going to have to figure out how to harvest and press AND how to get wine to Leesburg on Friday. Whoever decided to put wine festivals in the middle of harvest is a moron.
I can't show you DMB yet, so here is something I gotwhile I was waiting.
I'm lying in bed because my stomach hurts. I as going to go for a long run this morning, but am postponing it until later today due to this.