The Brave New World of Getting a Job

Today I encountered a job posting that concluded with this sentence:

Please apply by forwarding to us a link to your public profile on LinkedIn.

Oh lord, what have we come to...

Not again! Yes, it's snowing.

Still regaining my health after getting walloped by the flu and getting laid low for almost ten days. Just getting my life back in order - especially getting ready for the arrival of the Behemoth II which is supposed to arrive tomorrow. So, the sight of falling snow came as quite a surprise. As was the sound of half the lilac in the backyard crashing down to the ground from the weight of the snow.


Hopefully this will all turn to rain before the night is up.

Claiborne Pell 1918-2009

Among Senator Pells achievements listed in his NYTimes obit was this:

Mr. Pell also was the author of the National Foundation of the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965. That legislation paved the way for the National Endowment for the Arts, which makes federal grants to artists and arts organizations, and the National Endowment for the Humanities, which channels federal money in literature, history, language and philosophy, among other fields.

The creation of the National Endowment for the Arts did much over the years to foster avant-garde styles and techniques that made American artists renowned worldwide for work that Mr. Pell personally disliked.

“I don’t like abstract paintings,” he told an interviewer in 1996, saying he had no use for any artwork “more abstract than Picasso’s Blue Period.”

“I think that many of the grants made to artists by the endowment were mistakes,” he said, adding quickly, “But I’ll never intrude.”

More snow fell last night

My yard, taken this morning. As you can see the bamboo and lilac are drooping lower and lower from the weight of the snow.


Walking around Ballard this morning...

Morning after the storm

Ballard (and I assume most of Seattle) is under a thick layer of snow.

I was in my studio this morning - and saw out the window the landlord's cat trying to navigate the snow. He'd put a paw out and gingerly check it. He'd decide to step. and then fall through the ice crust. This routine repeated itself several times making for an amusing sight. Here are his paw tracks...



And this is the yard outside my door after I dug myself out.

And another storm update

I went out and shoveled after the last posting and it has snowed steadily since...

Storm update 10:43pm

I think I'm going to go out and shovel again. If I don't do it now I might not be able to open my door in the morning.


The weatherman get poetic: A wintry mix early will transition to some snow showers late.

Getting ready for the storm

A small caravan went to Fremont Abbey this morning to load out all the Tuning the Air show 'stuff' - except for the risers and lights. It took far less time and half the cars than we'd prepared for, so we ended the caravan at Vera's for a ritual Seattle Circle breakfast. From there each of us went our way. My way was to Ballard Market which was jammed with shoppers. Thursday's snowstorm was enough to bring Seattle to a near halt - and apparently that storm was barely a dress rehearsal for what is to come tonight - and it seems everyone was at the market to stock up.

My needs were few (bananas, cheese, canola oil) and I miraculously found a line that had only 10 people ahead of me when I queued up.

Once home, I prepared a small package and walked to the post office to mail it off to Michigan. The snow started falling again - a disarmingly light snowfall. The forecast indicates we should expect 5-8 inches before the night is over.


What fun, huh?

TTA Cancelled & Behemoth update

Here's the message Curt sent out to the Tuning the Air mailing list yesterday

It’s snowing in Seattle!

The roads in Fremont are unplowed, unsalted, and treacherous as of midafternoon. The snow continues to fall, and the temperature is dropping.

Frankly, much as we would love to see you at the closing night of our Sixth Season, we would prefer everyone stay safe so that they can make it to Opening Night of our Seventh Season, on February 5, 2009.

So, please stay home tonight. Have a wonderful holiday, and we look forward to seeing you in 2009.

All the best from the entire Tuning the Air company.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And after an initial reply that requested more information and warned me that replacement is rare, this response from HP

My manager just approved the replacement. I will start working on the paperwork. It still needs to be approved by a group called "mission Control" but they usually go with our suggestions which will be to replace it. I am going to try to get your printer sent to me in Boise for evaluation.

Snow again

Who was it who told me it rarely snows in Seattle?

I made these photos when I went out this morning to shovel/sweep the walk. And I have been out again since to shovel/sweep again. And the snow keeps falling...

We may have our first cancellation ever of a TTA performance.

He makes this look far too easy

I can't seem to get the YouTube imbed to work, so here's the url.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yjoyF0NuYA

Season Seven - graphics

The great and mighty TTA producers have spoken and this is the design they have chosen fo next season's poster.

Bread & Snow

It is 23 degrees in Seattle this morning. Snow fell yesterday. That is my backyard you see there yesterday morning. And this is what it still looks like today. The walkway to my car is almost all ice and makes for precarious walking.



Still studying different ways of making bread. The most recent experiment yielded a loaf, that while not beautiful, yielded real flavor. This experiment is based on maintaining bread dough in the refrigerator. When it gets low through use, one need only mix in more flour, water, salt and yeast. The small amounts of dough remaining from the previous batch influences the next, and so on. While not a true sour dough, it is developing good flavor. This most recent loaf was distinctly better than the last. Having bread dough in the fridge also means that fresh pita bread, or pizza dough, or even yeasted cinnamon walnut rolls are always available with a little planning. (The dough still requires 2-3 hours of rise-time just before baking.)

Still working on TTA poster designs. This one looks like a finalist:

Brrrr

Seattle is very cold today and likely to get even colder over the next ten days. It is definitely winter. An envelope from my mother delivers my Christmas wafer (oplatek) and that is really all that I need to celebrate the holiday.

Had coffee with DavidE this morning. He has purchased the new Canon 5D

A very good (if short and small) guitar circle session with Curt this afternoon. An extremely simple exercise circulating C Major among the three of us, which meant that each of us played a series of 4ths. Then, he asked me to play my notes alone in a definite rhythm. Then MB and G (it was only the three of us) were told to drop their notes in as triplets in between my notes. And then Curt told me to go faster. And faster. Though I am sure they were both challenged, I had my hands quite full maintaining a rhythm as they struggled to drop their notes in. I had to pay attention to them and yet not pay attention to them. When we managed to pull this off, it was quiet beautiful. While we were playing I noticed that when we ascended the open A note I played sounded terrible, dull yet loud. When we descended, the open A sounded full and rich. Even after I noticed it, I couldn't improve the quality of the ascending A.

A radio announcer for one of the classical radio stations came to Thursday night's performance. More than once during the show I looked at his face and saw him utterly mesmerized. Yesterday, even though TTA's music doesn't really fit his station's programming, he mentioned the project (very nicely!) and played a piece from one of the CD's I gave him at the end of the show.

A week of work

I have been heads-down devoted to working on the HP this week - and as the above scan can attest, we (HP & I) are no closer to a solution yet.

Every time we thing we have the symptoms of the problem narrowed now, something happens that challenges what we understand.

Actually, I have found a spare moment or two to work on drafts for next season's poster, though there is a campaign going to just keep last season's poster imagery.

This is my favorite of the draft designs so far.

Eva Zeisel - The playful search for beauty

"Novelty is a concept of commerce, not an aesthetic concept."

"Innovation is not part of the aim of my work."

"The playful search for beauty."

~~~~

a haircut

Yowzee!

Fun at tonight's performance

Mary Beth brought each of us a pair of funny, refracting 'eyeglasses'. I used mine in front of the camera lens...

More Behemoth Weirdness

I'm truly confounded.

Images on right and left were printed with exactly the same instructions. I printed this composite image four times. Prints 1, 3, & 4 looked like the one on the right. Print #2 - inexplicably - is the one on the left. This is a scan of two prints, side by side, on the scanner (and scanned simulateously.)

from Harper's Magazine: Powers of Empathy

“It’s beyond my skills as a writer to capture that day,” begins a sentence that stopped me this weekend and made me break into a very earnest smile. And then there’s the sentence that preceded it:

http://harpers.org/archive/2008/12/hbc-90003939