Wet

Drizzly and intermittently wet.

Sitting for five this morning - small for a Saturday. Shortly after nine o'clock, a cell phone erupted with a single burst of synthesized cacophony masquerading as a musical phrase. Later I learned it was my 'new' cellphone receiving an advertising text message from AT&T. What idiot thinks that a text message delivered on Saturday morning is going to influence anyone's choices about cellphone services?

Spent what spare time I had the last few days preparing several portfolios of images for the Facebook account I set up. I confess I expected more arts activity on Facebook - but so far my profile is being swarmed by guitarists - especially since Curt invited me as a friend. He is one popular guy and people I don't even know are wanting to be my 'friend' because I'm now in Curt's list of friends. At least I have to assume this is the reason. And in one case, a fellow who doesn't even like me has sent a friend request. Weird.

The effort to prepare these portfolios was a worthwhile activity. I saw things I haven't seen before about many images - and saw them differently because of the way I was organizing them.

Think they are ready?

Walking up Phinney Ridge in a light drizzle this morning. Saw a household that is definitely ready for tonight!


The saga of the Behemoth continues. Nearly miraculous intervention resulted in HP agreeing to take responsibility to repair the printer. That certainly merits a gold star in the Customer Service column. However - it turns out they are seriously back-ordered on the part required to repair the device. The best estimate for availability is December 10th. That makes it impossible for me to realistically respond to requests for holiday print sales.

Update: One of the fellows in the 'high value team' has weaseled an arrangement with his manager to take the part out of one of his printers and send it to me. Cross your fingers and toes!

If this doesn't warm the cockles of your heart, nothing will...

From Flickr:

Oh my.... may it be so

Another interview

Had an interview over in Bellevue yesterday. The hiring manager and his assistant both asked questions. It was comfortable and seemed to go well. When they got to the end of the three pages of questions they had prepared, the manager asked me,

"How would you move Mt Rainier to Oregon?"

Say, what?

I asked him what he meant? He answered by saying he said he was a pretty literal guy. I thought for a moment, wondering what this trick question was for - and decided he wanted to see how I responded to an unpredictable situation, so I began to verbally piece out the problem. "What is this Mt Rainier you want moved? How big is it, what does it entail? Why do you want it moved? -- This effort is going to require a lot of enthusiasm, so I'll need to understand the motivations. Where do you want it moved to in Oregon - I have friends there who may be impacted. What about the loss to Seattle, I am personally fond of the site of Rainier when it pops up in the landscape...."

I have no idea how my response was interpreted, but I'll bet he learned more about me from that single question than he did from anything else he asked.

Job Descriptions

When I read a job description with a line like

'Must have a passion for online advertising'

I want to slap the HR person who wrote it. Perhaps I have a skewed notion of passion, but applying that term to advertising just feels so wrong.

And then there were nine.

A good show last night. Ian was included in the performance team, and while it wasn’t exactly his debut (that happened at Raft Island) this was the first time we had to accommodate him in the set and lights. Travis chose to use the lights previously assigned to Curt and Chris to illuminate Howard, Curt & Chris. Practically speaking this meant Curt had no blue lights on him. Meleah compensated by using the lightest touch of red. The result was that during the ‘all-blue’ portions of the show, Curt was lit with red and this gave him a diabolical air. Not menacing, but definitely mischievous. For the encore, Curt led the team in some impromptu whizzing. His whizzing style can sometimes produce false signals. (I learned this when I was to his right in one of the last circles at Raft Island and I saw it again last night. His wrist and arm move, but he doesn’t strike the strings.) So, there were a few moments of uncertainly, but overall the team projected a sense of having fun and enjoying themselves. (This assessment comes from audience comments.) The encore may be a good place for the whizzes for now – at least until the whiz controversy blows over.

Jax: 'And then there were nine.'

Calls from HP confirm that a service call will be place on Monday morning. Another call just now informs me that I have an interview on Tuesday for the document management gig.

Helped Travis with his move this morning and then dropped by the Travgor compound to begin hauling the compost bin out of there. A bounty of earthworms throughout the compost! I icked Igor out when I shared this bit of news with him. He was surrounded by the drum kits he is hurriedly finishing work on in anticipation of a big drum sale he is planning for this weekend.

Travis' new home (He lives on the 2nd floor.)

Igor repairs a drum kit

Back home again, finding a place to heap the unripe compost required a bit of yard work. And once I was in the yard, the project expanded to address a number of postponed activities.

Now to prepare for tomorrow’s photo session….

On the present moment in agriculture

Michael Pollan writes an excellent primer on agriculture for the incoming president and the nation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/12/magazine/12policy-t.html

Michael Pollan is the author of “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto.”

Returning from Raft Island

Back from Raft Island and found this creature had woven a web across much of my front door.


Raft Island is a small island more than an hours drive (mostly) south of Seattle and within Puget Sound. We stayed in the All Saints Center in a mix of cabins with the use of the kitchen/dining facility and the chapel. We transformed the chapel into a guitar circle space where we worked on whizzes, zither's and repertoire. I wish I had had a glimpse of the possible repertoire items so that I could have been better prepared for Thursday night's performance, but it turned out as best it could considering...

Raft Island: Kitchen/Dining hall in the background, chapel in the foreground.

Raft Island: Chapel on the left, some of the cabins on the right.

Doris Kearns Goodwin

On living a good life: work, love & play.

Tuning the Air vistors

Post-show images from Thursday's show, including a snap that includes BillR & TonyG.

women

Stealing this from David's weblog because it is worth stealing.

My fellow prisoners...

Now there's a Freudian slip!

Home grown sweet corn

It seems my corn peaked sometime in the last two weeks when I was overwhelmed by SustainableBallard. Last night I had an ear at dinner - and while tasty, it wasn't what sweet corn should be straight from the garden.


Last night's House Circle was devoted to improvisation. I suggested we improvise using the chord patterns that were the basis of our recording. This suggestion was born out of a moment Sunday morning where IgorK was practicing one of the chords and I joined in executing the pattern backwards. Then Ian began soloing on top of that - and it turned out quite nicely. So with five of us, we tried working on it in earnest - and several sublime moments emerged. The dynamics that naturally emerged were the most surprising element to me.

So far

From yesterday's recording session...


Contacted a Bay Area photographic colleague, H. Golden, last week for advice on my new situation with the Behemoth. She, in turn, approached her contacts in Spain. They replied asking for more information, so this morning has been devoted to writing (and illustrating) a four page summary of my experiences with getting support for the Behemoth. It was not the most pleasant experience to re-live the last 18 months of Behemoth-hell.

This situation has me questioning a future in photography as it is presently conceived. It is time, overdue even, to consider how else I might make what I wish from this medium.


Beginning the wrap-up of the SustainableBallard gig with organizing the sea of boxes from the festival and the party that are strewn around my kitchen.

Takin' it Back with Barack Jack! (For Swing voters!!!)

Onward

Last night's party was declared a success by many of the participants. I am very glad to have it behind me. A few SustainableBallard tasks remain, but none with a hard and fast deadline. I would have liked a day-off today, but I'd committed to a recording project a while back and for reasons I do not grasp, today was our only opportunity to rehearse and tomorrow is the recording.

As I type this, my friends are meeting without me back in the Bay Area. My level of exhaustion confirms I made the right decision not to go, but I regret missing this meeting.

Screen Test, Part II

Tuning the Air, Oct 2, 2008

Michel visited again last night, doing another video test.

I know the team would prefer larger audiences, but there is a real pleasure in attending a show with a smaller, audience, particularly dedicated to listening. It almost felt like a show at Trinity. There was a couple in the audience last night, who have not attended a Seattle Circle event since the time when Steve Ball was a player. They were duly impressed.

~~~

Tonight was the final event for this SustainableBallard gig. I still have a few more deliverables, but none as time constrained as this. I had to buy bottled water, napkins and paper plates - otherwise I managed to have everything donated. It even astonishes me.

Party Madness

Still preparing for tomorrow night's party. While looking through the images the three volunteer photographers made, I discovered this one. A rare image of me smiling. And with friends who have nothing to do with TTA or SB!

image taken by Emily Hamm

Well this is heartening to read....

Former editor of the National Review speaks out for Obama:

But today it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don’t work. The Bush tax cuts—a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war—led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his “conservative” credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask.

Today it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming bellicosity about making the world “safe for democracy.” It is John McCain who says America’s job is to “defeat evil,” a theological expansion of the nation’s mission that would make George Washington cough out his wooden teeth.

This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse.

=snip=

...Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.