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Open Mike

Open Mike: New Habits

Monday, 06 March 2023

Happy to report that my lifestyle changes are going swimmingly*. My problems are worse than some others have, and not as bad as some others deal with. But they're mine so they're all I can share.

I'm either supposed to do, or trying to do on my own, five things:

  • Go back to my plant-food diet, and stop eating sugar;
  • Wear compression socks;
  • Lose weight;
  • Resume using CPAP; and
  • Exercise.

The Five Doctors (I seem to keep seeing different people) are more or less agreed that I was having heart problems caused by sleep apnea—my heartbeat had become uncoordinated and irregular and my heart wasn't pumping enough blood, so I wasn't getting enough oxygen. This was causing all sorts of symptoms. I've been back on the CPAP for 31 days and the difference is...astonishing. I've gone from extreme fatigue (four naps in one day being the signal that got me to the doctor) to no naps; from oxygen hunger and shortness of breath to breathing normally; from lethargy to energy; from badly fractured sleep (with an avalanche of nightmares) to almost normal sleep; from confusion to normal mental sharpness (such as it is, yuk-yuk).

I've been off sugar and back on my plant-food diet for a mere eight days, and have been working out for only six days, and I've already lost 9.3 lbs. (.66 stone). (I weigh myself first thing in the morning on an excellent scale.) Who knows if the weight loss is attributable to the return of normal heart function, or the diet and exercise, or the resumption of normal sleep, or all those things?

The exercise is interesting. I rather enjoy it. I just take my tablet and read, and that makes the time fly by. I use some combination of a total of five different cardio machines, alternating sitting with being on my feet. I get my heart rate to between 90 and 100 BPM and keep it there. It isn't hard. I'm going to add workouts with dumbbells sooner or later.

Books, books!
I'm really enjoying Bill Bryson's The Body: A Guide for Occupants. I love love love his guided tours of subjects far from my usual field of interest; I lapped up his lovely book on physics, A Short History of Nearly Everything. The Body is equally entertaining, and bits and pieces of fascinating information fly by. For instance, babies who grow up in houses with cats present almost never get asthma. (I'm on the chapter about the lungs now.) His vivid account of how long it took before we accepted that smoking was linked to lung cancer is very telling. There's certainly a parallel to the obesity epidemic: as Dr. John McDougall says, "People love to hear good news about their bad habits."  

Speaking of which, that's what I'm working on now, habits. I'll let you know how it goes. I'll report back in a month or two. I hope I can do this. (I initially mistyped "can't" for "can"...Freudian slip?)

And speaking of habits—to briefly get back on topic—I'm carrying the camera again. Too many pictures were going by in my daily life. From now on, where I go, the camera goes.

Mike

*Except that I'm having trouble with time management.

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Keith Mitchell: "I also enjoy Bryson's writing. Despite being a recently retired registered nurse, The Body left me with a sad sense of my lack of knowledge but simultaneously a sense that more work and research will still facilitate big improvements to our health.

"Glad to hear you are on the right side of your health concerns and hope that your new habits become embedded quickly."

Steven ralser: "If you want to read further about one of the reasons why it took so long to recognize the link between smoking (and second hand smoke)and lung cancer, read Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, by Naomi Oreskes [and Erik M. Conway —Ed.]. See also https://www.merchantsofdoubt.org."

JoeB: "Good to hear the phoenix is rising from the ashes. I have found going to the gym an excellent way to organize my day—I enjoy the routine. I also enjoy the results of my workout. The social aspects of seeing the same folks at the same time of day cannot be discounted. Diet cannot be ignored. What and how much is eaten make all the difference in our life. I should have turned green if the saying 'you are what you eat' is true!"

MikeR: "Yay for you! And aren't those sleep apnea nightmares horrifying?"

Mike replies: They certainly are. I didn't think I was going crazy, but I did think the cause was fundamentally psychological. I didn't realize it was a symptom of sleep apnea.

Posted on Monday, 06 March 2023 at 09:51 AM in Off-topic posts, Open Mike | | Comments (7)

Wednesday, 20 March 2019

Wednesday Open Mike: Diet Progress

[I didn't write an Open Mike—"the anything-goes, often off-topic editorial page of TOP"—last week, so I'm being indulgent with myself this week. I stuck it behind a page break in case you'd rather skip it.

On that heading, it's always wise to bear in mind that not every post here is for everybody. That's how I think of blogging as I write. Sometimes the posts are for 90% of all my readers, sometimes as few as 5%, and there are posts for every percentage in between. It's all good, though, because the 5% who like one post might be among the 10% who didn't like the post everyone else did. A blog is like the weather in Vermont—if you don't like it, just wait a few hours. Or days anyway. It'll change. Today's topic has come up before—with some of the same points—but yesterday we were talking about Range Rovers, a topic I'm pretty sure will never come up again even if I keep TOP going till I'm 92.  —Mike]

 

I'm not in a position to lecture you about food, so don't mistake my motives here. But let me tell you, there are few subjects more passionately divisive these days than diet. It's getting right up there with politics and religion.

It amuses me that even inside the little dietary precinct in which I've taken refuge lately—WFPB, which stands for "whole-food plant-based"—the various high-profile gurus have their, shall we say, theological disputes and differences...

Continue reading "Wednesday Open Mike: Diet Progress" »

Posted on Wednesday, 20 March 2019 at 01:14 PM in Off-topic posts, Open Mike | | Comments (40)

Friday, 08 March 2019

Open Mike: The Thousand Centuries

["Open Mike" is the anything-goes, often off-topic Editorial page of TOP. It's supposed to appear on Wednesdays, but this has been an atypical week for me. That's my excuse. —Mike the Ed.]

Ronnie

Ronnie O'Sullivan, from his Facebook page. With eventual
champion Judd Trump back in the bokeh.

Just briefly—I know a lot of people don't care for cue sports, but I'm a lifelong pool buff and, lately, utterly besotted with the quirky put perfect English game of snooker. Snooker currently has a larger-than-life star whose brilliance, and the beauty of whose play, is vaulting the game to unforeseen heights. His name is Ronnie O'Sullivan. His closest rival in the history of the sport describes him as a "genius." He is aging, but his star is burning more brightly than ever. He is to his sport* what Pelé, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods, Aryton Senna and Serena Williams are, or were, to theirs.

Currently we're halfway through the Players Championship being played in Preston, Lancashire, England—and O'Sullivan is getting very close to an epic landmark, both for him personally and for snooker. His record of "centuries"—runs of 100 or more points in one turn at the table—stands at 997. (He made two more yesterday.) Three more and he will reach the fabled 1,000 mark, which through most of the game's history has been thought impossible.

To score in snooker you must pocket a red ball first, which earns you one point and the right to pocket a colored ball. Those score between two and seven points depending on the color and their position on the table. Red balls stay down, but colored balls are re-spotted until the end of the game. Here's a brief video that explains the rules and basic strategy of snooker.

A "perfect game" in snooker is a 147. O'Sullivan leads history in 147s in match play with 15. The player in second place, the great Scotsman Stephen Hendry, who was once considered unsurpassable as the greatest player in history, is second with 11. To win a frame (which happens when one player gets comfortably more points than are left on the table, usually around 65–75 points) and then continues playing such that he scores 100 points in one turn at the table—that's a century. They used to be quite rare, but in this era of full-time touring professionals they're getting more common. Stephen Hendry had 775 centuries when he retired at age 43 in 2012, still the second-highest total ever. Australian Neil Robertson is the only player ever to make 100 centuries in one year—he made 103 in the 2013–14 season.

O'Sullivan ended the 2017–18 season with 948, and talk was rife that he would inevitably break 1,000. He's on the doorstep now. To see any of the recent ones, about all you have to do is Google "Ronnie O'Sullivan 9xx." A video of Ronnie scoring that particular century will pop up. I've watched a number of them twice.

Can anyone ever break such a record? It's certainly possible—Ronnie has taken breaks from competition in his career, and currently plays in only a selected few tournaments every year. Someone nearly as good as he is with an appetite for play more like Stuart Bingham's could conceivably surpass him. Someday.

Ronnie got me into snooker, but I doubt he'll get me out of it (attendance at NBA games actually dropped after Jordan retired). It's a magical game, as exact and as perfectly in balance as baseball, and great fun to watch. No frame is ever quite the same. It's just a special thing to be a snooker fan at this moment in time, the autumn of O'Sullivan's scintillating, mercurial career, during which all the records he will end up setting will be set. Those of us who play cue sports know how insanely hard it is to do what he does—to watch him in full flow is to be amazed. Even standout stars like Stephen Hendry and Steve Davis admit there's never been anyone quite like him.

Other sports fans more often remember big moments in team sports. Fair enough. But for me, the day Ronnie hits a thousand will be a day to never forget.

Mike

*People who think cue sports are not "sport" are all wet—snooker requires two-thirds the intellectual power of chess, half as much concentration as driving racing cars, nearly as much physical skill as golf, and as much constant practice and fortitude under pressure as any sport you can name. It demands hand-eye coordination, steadiness, great touch, and sometimes an almost ungodly precision. All that's missing is the brute physical effort component that some Americans wrongly believe to be a component of the definition of the word. If archery, the shot-put, high-diving, weightlifting, and bowling are sports, then snooker surely is.

ADDENDUM: For further reading, here's the now three-year-old New Yorker profile of Ronnie.

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Would you help?

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Rodolofo Canet: "O'Sullivan not only takes breaks and plays only selected tournaments. He's been able to fail on purpose a very easy maximum break of 147 complaining they're paid too low in tournaments! Please remind that only 147 147s have been scored in the history of the sport. He was expected to refuse scoring more centuries in the current tournament just to synchronize his thousand with the World Championship. He used to play very, very fast, and because of that is nicknamed "the Rocket." He can play with both hands. In fact, at the beginning of his career, a rival complained of his changing hands for a difficult shot, claiming disrespect. He replied that he could play better with his left than his rival could with his natural hand. The complaint reached the high organizers of snooker and he was made to demonstrate his skills to avoid a penalty. He's the closest thing to a true genius you can find in today's sport. And I used to be a loyal Hendry fan!"

Greg Heins: "O'Sullivan was born in Ilford, so doesn't that make this a photo story?"

Mike replies: Yes! Yes, it does!

Posted on Friday, 08 March 2019 at 11:43 AM in Off-topic posts, Open Mike | | Comments (15)

Wednesday, 27 February 2019

Open Mike: Video Chautauquas* (OT)

["Open Mike" is the often off-topic Editorial page of TOP. It appears on Wednesdays. Off-topic posts on TOP are labeled "OT" in the title in case you prefer to avoid them.

By the way, I'm feeling a whole lot better today, thankfully. Thanks for all the good wishes! —Mike the occasionally violently non-vertical Ed.]

While I delve into the no doubt delightful comments on yesterday's post (127 of 'em!), which should be fun, I thought I'd share a few of my favorites among recent YouTube discoveries. If you think I'm trying to distract you before you add more to my workload, I take the Fifth.

Botany of desire• A book author whose work I've enjoyed over the years, Alain de Botton, explains Why You Will Marry the Wrong Person. This one's pretty dense but full of insights I wish I'd had while there was still time to do something about it. I can certainly attest to the idea that we're not attracted to partners who are good for us, we're attracted to partners who are familiar. Alain's talk is on zeitgeistminds, and there's a book, too. Both the book and the talk derive from the single most-read article in the New York Times in all of 2016.

• The late "comedian's comedian" George Carlin on why It's Important Not to Give a Sh*t. Successful comedians—maybe all successful artists, but at least comedians—have to "come into themselves" before their work (and their personas) get locked and loaded. I've always been amazed by the fact that the young David Letterman, having been fired from a job and with his life going nowhere, sat down to figure out what his real skills were and concluded that the thing he was best at was making fun of people. That's brilliant, I think—it's not even in a category I would have accepted as being among the legitimate answers to the question. I would have compartmentalized things and been trawling around in my conception of the "job skills" category. You gotta go with your gifts—but, to do so, you've got to have the courage to see your actual gifts clearly. In this short reminiscence from the Archive of American Television, George gives a succinct and useful account of how he modified his dreams and became himself. 

• Another author I enjoy, Malcolm Gladwell, retells the Biblical story of David and Goliath from a rationalist and historical perspective, and I found it just plain fascinating. Turns out it boils down to weapons technology, according to Malcolm, and poor Goliath never had a chance. I like the stories behind myths, like the astonishing truth behind the Johnny Appleseed legend in the 59-page first part of Michael Pollan's beautiful little four-part book The Botany of Desire, a long-ago (and treasured) recommendation from my brother Scott. This "educational and entertaining" TED Talk relates to Malcolm Gladwell's 2015 book about underdogs and misfits.

• Yet another book author I've learned a lot from (sensing a trend here?), the Dutch primatologist and ethologist Frans de Waal, explains The Surprising Science of Alpha Males. The qualities we actually both require and admire in alpha males (and females) are indeed eye-opening. Of course, as always, Frans tells the human story through the lens of chimpanzee and bonobo behavior, as he does in my favorite amongst his books, Our Inner Ape, in which he speculates about some of the more mystifying human behavior patterns from the foundation of what we know about our closest primate relatives.

Enough for now. Please check back later to read the comments on yesterday's post. I'll get another mug of tea and get right to work.

Mike

Oh, and by the way:

*Chautauqua: Colloquially, a chautauqua (shaw-TALK-wah) was a public talk meant to the educational but also entertaining. Merriam-Webster defines it as "Any of various traveling shows and local assemblies that flourished in the U.S. in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, that provided popular education combined with entertainment in the form of lectures, concerts, and plays, and that were modeled after activities at the Chautauqua Institution of western New York." If I'm not a chautauqua channel then I don't know what!

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Here’s the situation

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Bruce: "Not again!!! You keep deviating me sideways during my morning coffee to emerge two hours later having to catch up on 'things-that-must-be-done-today.' Your link to George Carlin took me down an extraordinary road into totally unfamiliar YouTube territory. His work was completely new to me and I now realise how far ahead of his time he was. A precious jewel indeed. Perhaps a small sip of George every morning will substitute for lack of Kirk Tuck after you."

KeithB: "Were Chautauquas the first TED Talks?  8^)  "

Mike replies: Very much in the same spirit as public lectures in the 19th century, I think, which were a big deal and well attended. Mark Twain paid off his mountain of debts by touring the world giving lectures.

Posted on Wednesday, 27 February 2019 at 01:42 PM in Off-topic posts, Open Mike | | Comments (8)

Wednesday, 30 January 2019

Open Mike: Mr. T

["Open Mike" is the open-topic, all-things-considered Editorial page of TOP, and it appears on Wednesdays.]

Somewhat to my surprise, I think I've successfully managed to become a tea drinker. Ctein would be proud.

One time when I was sixteen, I stayed out all night long on Saturday night and had to go to my after-school-and-weekend job, at the Bay Point Pharmacy, where I was a cashier, stockboy, and delivery driver, on no sleep whatsoever. Before work that Sunday morning I stopped in at the little deli/café a few doors down from the Pharmacy in the same shopping mall, and imbibed two mugs of a wretched substance adults reputedly drank to help them stay awake.

Since then I've been drinking coffee more or less daily for 45 years. ("The years, they do get behind us"...I used to be able to remember who said that.) But lately it became clear that it was no longer good for my health, so I quit.

You're either a cat person or a dog person, a stick shift person or an automatic person, a color person or a black-and-white person, a team sports fan or an individual sports fan, a coffee drinker or a tea drinker. Yeah, I know various people claim to be agnostic on these points, but I don't believe them.

(Just kidding.)

As a coffee person, though, I've really had to work at liking tea. I've tried several vendors and many different teas, and experimented perhaps a bit too obsessively with all sorts of variations on brewing methods and things like different types of water. I've been at this for a couple of months.

Bai mudan

After a lot of work, I arrived at my "daily drink"—white peony tea, or bai mudan. Bai mudan is available from many sources; here's one. I use the heavily processed and highly filtered water I have to have here at the house, which I then run through a Vinturi red wine aerator to add oxygen to the water. (This appears to be the same device for less money.) I'm not even entirely certain this works—obviously it's difficult to conduct blind experiments on myself. But I've brewed tea with and without several times, and I'm pretty sure it makes it easier for me to taste the flavors of teas. I don't have a very good sense of either taste or smell.

According to the supplier, the tea I've chosen has 10% of the caffeine of coffee. I usually drink two steepings in the morning, and a third in the afternoon, using the same three grams of tea leaves. Since each successive steeping has less caffeine in the brew, according to my reading anyway, the afternoon cup should have very little caffeine. Although, again, I have no way to really know. Some nights I sleep well, some nights I don't, and it doesn't seem to have much to do with the tea.

But...I'm happy. White tea (again, allegedly—I just read about things; I'm not a scientist) has certain health benefits, especially if you add a little lemon to it. And I like the taste. It has no astringency and no bitterness.

So I've settled into a new habit, for the next however many years. Who says old (photo) dogs can't learn new tricks?

Mike

P.S. Given the title, aren't you proud of me for getting through this entire post without once writing "I pity the fool"?

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Harsh reality

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Posted on Wednesday, 30 January 2019 at 10:36 PM in Off-topic posts, Open Mike | | Comments (30)

Wednesday, 09 January 2019

Open Mike: Evidence-Based Nutrition

[Ed. Note: "Open Mike" is the anything-goes, often off-topic editorial page of TOP, wherein we let Yr. Hmbl. Ed. off the leash and allow him to indulge in tracking behavior*. When all is well and the moon is in the Seventh House, "Open Mike" appears on Wednesdays.]

There's lots of putative information on the Web about nutrition, probably 90% of it misinformation. If you're curious, possibly the most reliable site, in my opinion, is NutritionFacts.org. Michael Greger, a rock star in the WFPB (whole-food plant-based) community, is not a typical "diet guru"—he started his organization with a grant, sustains it through donations, and doesn't accept advertisements or sponsorship. Everything on his website is free—you can't pay for any "tiers" or rewards or special attention—and he donates the proceeds of his books and speaking engagements to charity. This is in stark contrast to many other such figures, who are running little entrepreneurial businesses that are monetized in many different ways, from books, to overnight diet spas, to commercially-available salad dressings. Not that there's anything wrong with making a living.

And he sticks to evidence, mainly by collating and synthesizing the results of peer-reviewed scientific studies. As Dr. Greger puts it, "Every year, I read through every issue of every English-language nutrition journal in the world, so you don't have to."

Continue reading "Open Mike: Evidence-Based Nutrition" »

Posted on Wednesday, 09 January 2019 at 05:16 PM in Off-topic posts, Open Mike | | Comments (37)

Thursday, 20 December 2018

Open Mike: Find the Time

["Open Mike" is the often off-topic Editorial page of TOP. It appears on...oh, never mind.]

This is such an old-guy thing to say I can't believe I'm going to say it.

But then, sometimes the old are wiser than the young. If they've been paying attention, and have an affinity for a currently unpopular notion called truth.

Here's the weird little-advertised fact: if you drive at 55 MPH instead of 65 MPH your car is much more efficient. Just that little tiny increase in speed will drop your mileage efficiency by close to 10%.

I drive on 55-MPH roads all the time, because that's the State speed limit for two-lane roads around here. And around here, every place is far away from everyplace else. Every time I drive to town (16 miles round trip) I set the cruise control at about 65. Seems to be about what I can get away with. I've passed crouching cop cars at 65 and it doesn't trigger them to pounce.

But, wrong move, Poindexter.

Using an online calculator, I entered my car's highway mileage, an average number of highway miles driven per day, and the current price of gas. Unbelievably, I'd save almost $200 a year just by driving 55 instead of 65! No other change.

Most gasoline-powered cars reach peak efficiency right around 55 MPH. Lower speeds don't lower efficiency all that much, but at higher speeds, efficiency drops off fast. Drive 75 instead of 55 and your vehicle's efficiency will fall off by 25%. You'll get to your destination somewhat more quickly, but you'll burn more fuel, generate more pollution, and spend more money.

Are you really in such a hurry? Chillax*.

I'm setting my cruise control for 55 MPH from now on when I go into town. On the bad side, speeders coming up behind me will be annoyed, and will be impatient to find a place to pass me. On the good side, I won't be the speeder coming up behind other people, getting "flustrated" (as my friend Terry says**) and impatient with them as I try to pass them.

The round trip will take me two and a half minutes longer. I think I can afford that.

Mike

[CORRECTION: The math was wrong in the first version of this post. That is so very much not a surprise. Good with words, not good with numbers. —Ed.]

UPDATE: I drove to Geneva for dinner and groceries tonight, and clocked the trip from Penn Yan to Geneva via Pre-emption Road...it was 13.8 miles at a posted speed limit of 55 MPH. There is a short stretch of posted 30 MPH through the town of Bellona (it's down in a hollow). According to the car's trip computer, going exactly the speed limit the whole way, I averaged exactly 40.0 MPG. I usually get about 36–37 MPG in local driving.

Curb weight of the car (which is based on a Civic and has a Civis Si drivetrain) is 2,978 lbs. and the engine is a 2.4-liter naturally-aspirated I-4. So it's not particularly small and isn't known as a mileage champ. I thought 40 MPG was pretty good.

* Chill + relax; first known use, 1999. "A portmanteau...is a linguistic blend of words, in which parts of multiple words...are combined into a new word, as in smog, coined by blending smoke and fog, or motel, from motor and hotel." (Wikipedia)

**A perfect portmanteau, combining "flustered" and "frustrated." Flustration is a state in which we want to spend less of our time as we age.

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Phil Service: "Drag (air resistance) increases with the square of speed. Internal combustion engines are most efficient at moderate RPM—presumably somewhere around the RPM corresponding to maximum torque, but I suppose it might also depend on load. When I was a teenager living in England, I was an avid reader of Autocar magazine. They published very detailed road tests that included gas consumption at various constant speeds. As I recall, best mileage was almost always at about 50–55 MPH. There seems to be something about the combination of drag and engine efficiency for most cars that produces an optimum in that range. (Tire rolling resistance is another factor that affects fuel consumption. That's one of the reasons for the switch to radial tires from bias-ply. It's also a reason for increasing tire air pressure.) I'm pretty sure there is a penalty for going slower, but it is much less than that incurred at higher speeds. It seems to me that back in the 'gasoline crisis' years of the 1970s, the whole point of the nationwide 55 MPH speed limit was gasoline conservation."

John Krumm: "Best milage I ever got was on the Alaskan Highway in a Prius. Fifty-five limit, and around sixty miles per gallon."

kirk Tuck (partial comment): "Dearest Michael, a heartfelt warning. If you attempt to drive 55 on any of the major highways in Texas you will quickly be the target of life-threatening road rage that would be unimaginable to those living in the pleasant and un-rushed Northeast and Midwestern U.S. Our speed limit on most highways here is at least 70 mph and in Texas that seems to mean 'mandatory minimum.' When I drive back and forth to San Antonio from Austin; about 150 miles round trip, I get in the right lane and set the adaptive cruise control to 70. The cars in the two lanes to the left fly by at 85 to 90 mph. Ninety-five seems to break the speed that triggers our law enforcement into action....

"Seriously, if you plan on driving between major urban areas of Texas get yourself a big cup of strong coffee and drive like your life depends on going with the flow. We understand about the fuel economy issues, that's why gasoline is much cheaper here...."

Omar: "A few years ago, I got tired of the occasional speeding ticket. I decided to force myself to drive the limit at all times. A few observations:

1. Driving the limit made almost zero difference to my commute times. Previously, it had been 25 to 30 minutes of pushing all the time in bumper to bumper traffic to maximize speed. After, it was 27 to 30 minutes of relaxing driving with the road wide open in front of me. I spent less time waiting for lights to change, less time under the speed limit behind slower drivers. It doesn't make sense, but that's what I've observed.

2. Gas mileage may be better, but I had judged it to be a non-factor for my driving distances. A coffee a day was all I expected to gain. Definitely, I became a smoother driver, so maybe less wear and tear on brakes, etc.

3. I did a major trip across Canada and back through USA. The higher speed limits in the west made driving the limit easy. It was only southern Ontario and once I got back to Wisconsin and east that I noticed drivers being aggressive around me. That never bothered me because I can be just as aggressive as the next guy so I'm never intimidated. In Montana, I actually passed people at the speed limit. That really surprised me.

4. In order to maintain concentration, I focused on precise driving. Always staying in the middle of the lane, even on turns; never tailgating; attempting to anticipate lights, slowing down using the gas pedal instead of the brakes. I am probably more alert now than I was before.

5. My original goal was to drive the limit for a few weeks to reset my internal speed limit to one closer to the actual one. I kept this up for several years and am glad I did it. Lately, if I have passengers, I will drive at 10km (6 mph) over when the road is clear. I have decided not to make my orneriness the problem of my passengers.

6. The biggest gain is a huge reduction in stress. I find there are fewer people cutting me off than before. I drive my way, I don't tailgate anymore, I don't get so stressed out, and I actually enjoy driving again. The view with the road open in front of me is so much nicer than staring at bumpers trying to push the other guy to go faster which never worked, and never will work."

Posted on Thursday, 20 December 2018 at 09:26 AM in Open Mike | | Comments (41)

Wednesday, 28 November 2018

Open Mike: Life Without TV

I've just passed four years without a television. It's the longest time I've ever gone without one.

I've had several stints in my life without a TV, starting in about 1982 when I went for a a little over a year without one. I ended up hastily buying one a few days before the local-to-me Washington Redskins made their first appearance in the Super Bowl. It was worth it—Joe Gibbs, Art Monk, Joe Theismann, Big Dave Butz, John Riggins, and and "the Hogs" and the rest of them routed the Miami Dolphins for their first Super Bowl win.

The trouble with television was highlighted for me two weeks after the Super Bowl, when I found myself mindlessly watching reruns of "Bewitched" at two o'clock in the morning. (I admit I was rather bewitched by Elizabeth Montgomery.) Samantha wiggled her nose and Aunt Clara disappeared and the spell wore off me suddenly; I "came to" and marveled that the little black magic box could be causing me to waste my time on Earth so profligately.

I do miss television occasionally, I can't lie. I would like to watch some of the sporting events, and I do admit I'm less in touch with the news than I was when I watched network news every evening (tip for sleep improvement: watch the early news, never the late news). And when something really momentous happens, like the awful California wildfires, television is still where people like to turn for the latest.

Friedlander TVThe existential oddity of television sets is a leitmotif in the
work of Lee Friedlander, one of my photographic touchstones.

But there are a lot of things I hate about TV, too. The incubated culture of commercialism, very little of which I actually agree with; the constant hectoring yammer of false cheeriness; the torrent of ads and the increasing brevity and mannerism of the bits in between the ads; the glossy surface, seldom with any substance or soul beyond or beneath it; and the unceasing spellbinding distraction it encourages from the life I actually live.

And I see a little TV...just not on TV. Four or five years ago I binge-watched The Wire (which is the legendary Great American Novel in my opinion), and a year or two ago I did the same with the maddeningly inconsistent Downton Abbey, which I understand is being rejuvenated for the big screen next year. With Maggie Smith.

But most of my attempts to ignite an interest in popular series splutter, fizzle, and fade out. I tried, but I couldn't get into Breaking Bad or The Sopranos.

Besides, if you're a snooker fan like I am, there isn't time for watching much else.

I'm used to life without TV now, and I doubt I could go back. My friend Jim, whom I've known since we were seven, hasn't watched TV since the 1970s. It is possible. (They keep a TV and a DVD player in the closet and bring it out occasionally to watch a movie.) Anyway, I prefer to listen to music, or the waterfall, or the silence, and to read rather than watch. Most of all, I think I like being here, as opposed to letting myself be transported to some Wizard of Oz fake world where there's no there there*.

Mike

"Open Mike" is the often off-topic Editorial page of TOP, in which Yr. Hmbl. Editor contemplates life. It appears on Wednesdays.

*"There is no there there" is the best-known quote of Gertrude Stein's; she was referring to her childhood home in Oakland, California, when it no longer existed. The line appears in Chapter Four of her book Everybody's Autobiography, which continues her most famous book, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Stein, like Samuel Johnson and Oscar Wilde among others, was one of those authors who suffer the bittersweet fate of being more interesting than their works.

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

Khürt Williams: "If Netflix is TV then...I am lost. But Jim [in another comment —Ed.] has a point that 'computers, cell phones and similar devices' are just as effective time-wasters."

Mike replies: I certainly didn't mean to claim that I don't waste time!! Just that I don't own a television set, that's all.

I have two computers (one is reserved entirely for writing, and is only online so I can do quick research as I write), an iPhone, a laptop I never use except on my infrequent travels, and an iPad. I read on my phone and tablet. I watch shows and movies occasionally on the 27" computer (not as often as once a week, although sometimes I rise to that—I let my Netflix subscription lapse a few years ago), and I watch an awful lot of YouTube—most of it snooker matches from around the world. I can't watch them in real time, but since I'm very far removed from the world in which snooker is a "thing," I don't run much risk of hearing the outcomes beforehand. Being a British sport, snooker matches can go on for hours—I mean as much as six or eight hours over multiple days—so to watch even a fraction of a tournament can be a very significant time commitment. I would file that under "entertainment" rather than wasted time, like other people watch football or soccer, but that might be rationalizing!

Posted on Wednesday, 28 November 2018 at 10:25 AM in Off-topic posts, Open Mike | | Comments (57)

Wednesday, 14 November 2018

Open Mike: Teavivre (Tea Update) (OT)

["Open Mike" is the often off-topic Editorial page of TOP. It appears with iron discipline on Wednesdays. So is today Wednesday?! It is!

That's the story and I'm stickin' to it. —Yr. Hmbl. Ed.]

-

Teavivre

Bao Jia Cun Organic tea garden in Zhe Jiang Province of China
where some of Teavivre's teas are sourced.

...And the adventure continues. So far I've tried about 25 different kinds of green tea.

I don't like green tea very well yet, but it's healthier than coffee. The caffeine dose in the coffee I like messes with my heart (I've had a-fib). I had to prove that to myself: stayed off coffee for a week or three, then had my usual mug. Sure enough, I could feel the effect. Not good.

So that's it for coffee for me. (I don't like the idea of decaf.) I was a daily coffee drinker for most of 45 years—even roasted my own beans for a few years, which was delightful, a real pleasure.

But life is change, and ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

First step with green tea was to get away from teabags. Processing and handling dried tea leaves results in a certain amount of dust, flakes and bits, and those are used in teabags where what you can't see doesn't hurt you. Tea dust over-extracts easily, resulting in bitterness and astringency (that sourish taste with a "dry" mouthfeel—the goal with tea brewing is to extract for as long as you can before tasting any astringency. This requires some experimentation; good suppliers give you a starting point, but don't let it end there. Experiment for yourself). I did find a few teabag teas I like. One was in a sampler from Stash Teas that, alas, I've never been able to find again, and another was Tazo Organic Pan-Fired Green.

But loose leaf tea is the way I'm going to go.

Second step was to work out a brewing method. I got that lovely Willow & Everett electric kettle with temperature presets which is a fantastic luxury—it works perfectly and is surprisingly accurate. It was a good purchase; I love it. So nice to be able to heat water to just the temperature I want. (The 205°F setting is perfect for pour-over coffee, too.) And it turned out that the little glass teakettle I bought has a large oversized strainer that happens to fit perfectly in the top of my old Shaker Village mug I've had since I was nine years old. The glass top of the teapot covers it nicely. So the pot itself was prematurely retired and I brew tea right in the mug—it makes about 15 ounces, which is two of the traditional American "large" cups of tea. (Our cups of tea are about 8 ounces; Asians tend to drink cups of 3.5–4 ounces.)

Mug-smallBrewing tea. (Here's that timer. It's weighted so it doesn't slip around.)

I've tried a number of sources such as Harney and Sons, Tea Source which Ctein likes, Teavivre, Têtê Tea (from the Himalayas in Nepal, which I think is cool), Clearview Tea Co. which is owned and run by the wife and daughter of a Canadian TOP reader, and several others.

I've settled on Teavivre as my chosen source, for four main reasons:

  1. They offer free samples of your choice with your first order. Very nice. You can buy samples too, with enough tea for two American cups or four Asian cups. Good for exploring.
  2. You can choose for your tea to be delivered in a tin. If you buy the smallest (3.5 oz.) amount of tea, the tin only costs a few extra bucks and will hold 6–12 ounces of tea. They're high-quality tins with double-seal tops. You only need a few for the favorite teas you'll keep in stock, but it's nice to be able to get these cheaply.
  3. They offer a wide variety of teas, good if you want to experiment to find the ones you like best. (Têtê Tea by contrast offers only three, white, green, and black.)
  4. They're based in Fujian province in China, which is where the people who own my favorite local sushi restaurant come from. Through that connection I know several people from Fujian province, and I've gotten interested in it and have learned some things about it. So I like that connection. Of course that's just me.

Many of the teas come direct from China when you order them (all the samples and tea in tins come from China, for example), so it takes 8–10 days. Teavivre does have a new American warehouse now, in Arizona, so certain teas in zip bags bags come from there and take less time to arrive.

I've found a few I like, but I won't mention which one I've settled on as my daily drink. It's got a flavor I love and is low in caffeine. My choice isn't a big secret or anything, but everyone should choose according to their own taste and everyone's taste will be different. I'm certainly no tea expert. (I don't even have a very acute sense of taste.)

Finally, I should mention in passing that I like the language on Teavivre's website. It reads like expressive English written (or translated?) by a Chinese person, which seems honest to me. I hope they don't change that. It's perfect just the way it is.  :-)

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

TC: "The community college where I teach photography recently had a field trip for teachers, taking us out to a tea plantation in the mountains of Pinglin, Taiwan. There we not only listened to presentations on the tea-making process, we were able to pick and process some tea ourselves.

"It was very interesting, and gave me a renewed appreciation for tea even though I drink it every day."

Antonis R.: "Easy to see the underlying connection to TOP. Teavivre founder Angel Chen writes: 'My husband, Chris, also my partner, sometimes would laugh at me, Since all earnings are spent on more trips to further discover great tea. In return I would say: 'Why don't you talk about upgrading your camera?'"

David Evans: "That is a beautiful kettle, but I would be lost without a water level indicator. Also I'm amused at the claim that with a 1000-watt element 'your water boils in a fraction of the time compared to a normal kettle.' In the UK a normal kettle is 2000 to 3000 watts."

Mike replies: Yes, but I would assume that you in the UK know best when it comes to tea kettles!

Mani Sitaraman: "The Internet really is a fount of knowledge. Here's a detailed explanation that is a good follow-up read to David Evans' comment about electric kettles in Britain as compared to those in America, titled 'Why Kettles Boil Slowly in the US.'"

Mike replies: And here's an explanation of "fount of knowledge" vs. "font of knowledge."

Posted on Wednesday, 14 November 2018 at 02:22 PM in Followups, Off-topic posts, Open Mike | | Comments (26)

Tuesday, 30 October 2018

Open Mike: Election Day (OT)

["Open Mike" is the Editorial Page of TOP. It appears once a week or so.]

Not one but two apologies before the fact: one for temporarily transgressing this site's "gentleman's agreement" proscribing the discussion of politics. And the other for closing the comments. Forgive me for that last, but I lack the emotional fortitude to field and hold everyone's feelings about the current state of national and world affairs. And I'm happily busy these days, not least with a book which I'll tell you about tomorrow.

But this merits saying:

Where "American" = of or pertaining to the U.S. of A.,

A good Republican is an American first and a Republican second (or third, or fourth, or fifth); and

A good Democrat is an American first and a Democrat second (or third, or fourth, or fifth).

Country before faction. The other way around is bad citizenship, and traditionally un-American.

The proper, right, good and best analogy for political parties and factions should come from sports. Democrats and Republicans should be like rival college football teams from different States or schools, such as Oklahoma vs. Nebraska or Army vs. Navy or Harvard vs. Yale. No matter how fervid a fan we are, no matter how much we hope our team might win, no matter how much we detest our opponents, no matter how hoarse we scream ourselves cheering or booing, the whole object is to beat the other team fair and square and with good sportsmanship on the field of play and then shake hands afterward...not to blow up the other team's bus and kill everyone from the coaches to the ballboys dead for real, leaving grieving families weeping by fresh graves.

This deserves saying too: The less united we are, the weaker we are as a nation. The conservative opinion columnist David Brooks wrote an essay on October 15th called "The Rich White Civil War." In it he discusses a report that "breaks Americans into seven groups, from left to right, with names like Traditional Liberals, Moderates, Politically Disengaged and so on. It won’t surprise you to learn that the most active groups are on the extremes—Progressive Activists on the left (8 percent of Americans) and Devoted Conservatives on the right (6 percent)." He goes on to say that both of those groups largely consist of old rich white people whose views are intransigently the opposite of each other's.

The rest of us need to strive to put unity before divisions. The less united we are, the weaker we are as a nation.

It's one week till Election Day. Go team.

This concludes TOP's political coverage for the election season.

The Editor

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Posted on Tuesday, 30 October 2018 at 02:18 PM in Off-topic posts, Open Mike | | Comments (0)

Tuesday, 09 October 2018

Open Mike: Why Are Crossovers So Popular? (OT)

Ever wonder why so many people are buying SUVs and crossovers these days?

I've long thought that there are two reasons. First, height. It's nice to be up high; you can see the road better (and see over, or through, all the other tall vehicles). And second, conformity. We buy whatever everybody else is buying.

This second reason actually makes some sense, because whatever vehicle is mainstream at any given time gets the most R&D money and engineering and manufacturing expertise poured into it.

Want the truth? We can't handle the truth
But I was wrong, turns out. Jalopnik, the automotive site, recently let us in on the truth. "Don’t get it twisted," they say. "The real reason SUVs and crossovers are performing so well isn’t as much about cargo space, all-wheel drive for bad weather or our desire to own vehicles that project an image of rugged, outdoorsy individuality: it’s just that for an aging and increasingly unfit population, they’re just easier to get in and out of."

I had to agree. I've only ever bought one SUV, a 2012 RAV4 that I got tired of after three years, but that was the reason I bought it.

Don't think I'm being holier-than-thou. I found this BMI Calculator at the Mayo Clinic website, a good one because it takes girth into account. (To measure your waist, use a tape measure at the level of your belly button with your stomach relaxed.) According to the calculator, I am just a wee bit over the line between overweight and obese, and I have "an unhealthy waist size" that puts me "at very high risk of developing obesity-related conditions, such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and coronary artery disease." Yeah, okay, but not for lack of trying.

Subaru Crosstrek

Crossovers look nimble, lithe, and active, but their best
trick is that they don't remind us that we're not

At about the same time I bought that RAV4—which, not coincidentally, was about the time my weight peaked (at 273—I'm 233 now)—I got to sit in a Ford GT at an auto show. Whew, what an ordeal—it was like shoehorning myself into an undersized coffin sitting on the floor. Took some doing.

I also used that BMI Calculator to figure out what weight I would need to be to get into the range they call "normal." It's exactly what I weighed in my last years in high school and first years in college.

Shimmy in, slither out
"It’s easier to get in and out of a vehicle with seats about two feet off the ground," says Keith Knudsen, Ford vehicle architecture manager, quoted in an article in The Detroit Free Press. "Seat height is key," he continues. "People like to be able to slide in, not lift themselves up or down."

It's also the reason why SUV and crossover seats tend to be flat: easier to slide on to...and no telling how wide the butt is that has to fit on it. I sympathize there too: I test drove a Honda Civic Si a few years back, and the radical seat bolsters, which felt like they were designed for a slender Asian twentysomething, literally didn't fit my body. I sat half on top of the seat bolsters, and the back bolsters poked me right in the kidneys. (Best seats ever? The old VW GTI VR6. But it's not like I've tried everything.)

This is not something manufacturers are going to be talking about much, as both articles note. But the truth is, while we like vehicles that project an image of youth and vigorous athletic and outdoor activity, the really important thing about them is that they're easy to get into and out of. Otherwise, they'd remind us that we're fat and out of shape every time we got behind the wheel. And we can't have that.

Mike

"Open Mike" is the anything-goes, often off-topic Editorial page of TOP, wherein we let the Editor out of his kennel and let him stray. It appears either once, twice, three times, or no times per week, usually on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or Sunday.

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Jim Grey: "Cars are actually returning to form. The 'longer lower wider' era that began in the 1950s turns out to be a 60-year fad that has now ended. Did you know that a RAV4 has about the same exterior dimensions as the 1949 Plymouth station wagon? The RAV4 has a lot more interior space of course. I wonder how long before we stop calling these SUVs or CUVs and just call them cars."

Mike replies: Good point! Note the comments about the 1940s Chevrolet woodies in this post.

Jeroen Pulles: "It's the full-frame of cars; You don't really need it, but it's a safe choice. By the way, mounting surf boards on the roof of a SUV, as in the Subaru promotional photograph, is very unpractical. Don't forget to keep a ladder in the trunk. That's why you want a VW Transporter: just pop everything in the back."

Mike replies: I read an article recently that made the case for vans being the most practical cars—in practice much more useful for most people than pickup trucks or SUVs. The average pickup truck owner uses the cargo bed just four times a year, and the average SUV owner goes off-roading fewer times than that. Just ask yourself which you'd rather have, a van or a pickup truck, if you were moving and it was threatening to rain. The only problem is that they have a terrible image...somewhere between commercial delivery vehicle and soccer-mom kid-hauler. If only some carmaker could figure out a way to make vans macho.

Not THAT Ross Cameron: "They’re also popular with parents of young children for the same reason. Easier to lift ‘em out than bending down into a standard car."

Dennis Mook: "I shoot with Fujifilm APS-C and Olympus Micro 4/3 cameras and drive a minivan and I’m proud of it! Just returned from a 30-day road trip from Virginia to the Rockies and back. The minivan, which I bought for road trips after I retired, is the perfect vehicle. My wife and I can sleep in it if necessary, I can load a 4x8' sheet of plywood flat on the floor and seat eight as well. It is quiet, rides smoothly with comfortable seats, got me spryly over the Rockies and the best tank of gas gave me 31.2 MPG. The 5,700 mile trip overall averaged 27.9 MPG. Oh! The Fujifilm and Olympus systems, with their small and lightweight but extremely high quality lenses, are the perfect travel cameras as well! Be different, be proud and don’t go along with the crowd!"

Dan: "To be clear, the Mayo BMI calculator does not take waist circumference into account in the BMI number. BMI is still just weight divided by height squared in kg/m^2. But in addition to giving your BMI, the Mayo calculator also tells you if you have an 'unhealthy waist.' For guys, that's greater than 40 inches, for gals, 35 inches. (I spelunked into the Javascript and verified this.)"

John: "I've owned a great number of cars, including a 528 BMW, a SAAB 9000 turbo, usually with manual transmissions, and probably over a dozen motorcycles, but the only car I ever fell in love with was my Ford Aerostar [van]. Easy to get in and out of, great vision, unbelievably comfortable seats, and loads of space; once it carried a 17-foot rowboat in the back for a short distance. I almost cried when it had to be taken to the wreckers with a broken engine and transmission."

Rob L.: "I still want a truck, but my Toyota Sienna [minivan] is the best car I've had. Reliable, tough, carries all my stuff—even better, I don't have to unload everything after a camp out, or deal with covering stuff, etc. The only vehicle that would truly give me an advantage over my van is a full-length Suburban, in that it would have 4WD and ground clearance and about the same room, but at twice the price and half the MPG."

Posted on Tuesday, 09 October 2018 at 12:53 PM in Off-topic posts, Open Mike | | Comments (73)

Tuesday, 04 September 2018

Open Mike: What's That Smell?

"Open Mike" is the often off-topic, anything-goes editorial page of TOP. It appears on Wednesdays, except when it doesn't.

 

I've got a modest little suggestion that just might have the power to change your life. It's just something I've been noticing lately.

But permit me a little digression first. Many years ago I had an English professor at Reed College whose didactic method was to cite the titles of books. He would mention an idea, remember a book that expounded further on it, and leap to the chalkboard in a state of excitement to scribble down the author and title.

I, of course, being impressionable (I am still impressionable), wrote the authors and titles in my notebook, resolving to seek out and read them all.

That project foundered quickly. The gentleman was an endless waterfall of book recommendations. By the end of the first week of class my list had reached twenty titles, and I was already doubting my ability to follow through with all that semi-curricular reading. When my list reached sixty titles, somewhere around the third week, I threw in the towel. 

But I did read a few. One book I did read from his list, and was glad I encountered, was William Empson's Seven Types of Ambiguity. Empson was an Englishman, born in 1906, perished in 1984, who was allied with John Crowe Ransom's so-called New Criticism. When I went to the Amazon page for it just now and looked over the table of contents, the musty smell of the old volume in the Reed College Library came back to me so powerfully that I almost believed I was experiencing it again.

EmpsonBet you can't smell this. But I was startled to find that I could, for few seconds.

Anyway, recently I've become aware of certain types of statements, by me and by others. It's a kind of statement that can have two meanings. Psychological meanings, in this case. I don't know what type of ambiguity that would be, in Empson's terms.

It's when we make a statement about ourselves that seem to reflect fear or anxiety, but might also be mistaken for intention or resolve.

For instance, "I'm never going to find a job."

You might suppose that the speaker is saying "I'm afraid looking for a job will only lead to rejection or failure." / "I'm worried I won't have an income." That's the fear/anxiety meaning. But on the other hand, the exact same statement can be looked at from the intention/prediction angle: "I'll be damned if I'm going to get a job!" / "I don't know about you, but I refuse to work."

Which is it? Sometimes, even when I hear these statements in person and take in the context of the person's expression and surrounding statements, I still can't tell.

Here are just a few more examples, taken from real conversations I've heard recently:

Every boyfriend I find is a jerk.

People always let me down. It never fails.

I'll never be able to afford a new car.

I'm always going to crave cigarettes. 

I can't win!

Do some of these statements somehow contain both meanings at once? Partly fear—partly determination?

If you start listening for them, see if you don't begin to hear statements in this form from others. I've only been listening for them for a few weeks, and it gets easier as I go. Now they pop out at me.

And I have to warn you about something a little less comfortable. When you start listening for them in others, you might occasionally hear one coming from your own mouth! Then you might really want to try to resolve the ambiguity and figure out which meaning is more pertinent. Is it fear/anxiety/pessimism/lament—or intention/resolve/prediction/desire?

For instance, I recently heard myself saying, "I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life." Hmm. So am I saying I fear I'll always be alone—please prove me wrong? Or that I want to be alone and I dang well will be? Which is it? Or is it both at the same time somehow?

See if you can learn to listen for this type of statement from others. And see if you can notice it when you do it yourself.

The power of language
I do wonder about the power of language. When we make statements, are we telling ourselves things? "Things keep getting worse and worse for me," one friend told me not long ago. Well, that's a lament, for sure. But it can also be viewed as a prediction. Does stating the prediction over and over set it in our psyches, and help the prediction come true?

And, if that's so, well, then, can you regain power over it by using language to your advantage?

When I used the "I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life" example above, what sprung to mind was that in 2012 or so, I started telling people something I wasn't quite sure I believed myself: "I'm looking for a wife." I'd only say it where it was appropriate, and I'd say it to random people who I sometimes had only glancing contact with, like a saleswoman at a furniture store. But the strangest thing happened: women started coming out of the woodwork; female friends began introducing me to single friends.

And I noticed that all women were being nicer to me. Even attached women started treating me differently. If you think about it, the phrase "I'm looking for a wife," contains some powerful messages. The clearest ones are: I'm single; I'm not scrounging for casual sex; I'm ready and able to make a commitment. It also implies that you're not trying to hit on someone whose status you don't know. The saleswoman at the furniture store introduced me to her divorced mother.

And two years later, very improbably, I got to have a yearlong relationship with a woman I had always considered to be my long-lost "dream girl." It didn't work out, but that's another story. Just the fact that it happened is more than a little amazing. Did I help it along with that little five-word statement I kept saying to people?

When neighbors, acquaintances, friends and strangers hear "I'm looking for a wife," the takeaway is far, far different from "I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life." But the two statements aren't actually incompatible. They could both come from someone who's in the same place in their life.

Dare to spin it differently
So back to that person who said, "I'm never going to find a job." What if, instead, he started saying "I'm going to find a new job soon"?

You might argue that he doesn't actually know if he's going to find a job soon. But I'd counter that he doesn't actually know he's never going to find a job, either. Both statements are similarly provisional.

But "I'm going to find a new job soon" has very different takeaways for those neighbors, acquaintances, friends and strangers who hear it. It says, "he's looking"; "he's optimistic"; "he's working on it"; and "he might not be available for long." It implies that somebody's going to snap this guy up soon.

Not long ago I heard myself saying, "I could lose my house."

Ew. Wrong thing to say. Anxiousness, or prediction? Our minds are suggestible. When I looked at that title page for Seven Types of Ambiguity, I actually thought for a fleeting second that I was smelling something real—that the smell of a musty old book I read in 1980 was being replicated, somehow, by something nearby in the house. Of course it wasn't. It was a memory. But it shows how powerful our minds are, and how formidable the power of suggestion can be.

See if you can catch yourself repeating a pessimistic statement about yourself that might also be interpreted as a declaration of your intent. And if you do, don't let it slip thoughtlessly past. Grab on to it, hold it up to the light, examine it—and dare to turn it around! Even if you don't quite believe the one with the positive spin. Even if it's nothing certain. Figure out how you can transform the language into a statement that's positive, optimistic, and hopeful. And start saying that instead.

See what happens.

As for me...well, I'm going to have my mortgage paid off soon! 

:-)

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Jason Melancon (partial comment): "Unconscious aspirational lies fit into this discussion also. The extent to which we unwittingly reveal ourselves is startling once you learn to listen for it. I tell people this, they don't believe me, then they try listening for it for a while and often then tell me how well it works.

"When someone makes some moderate to strong statement about their character or behavior using unconditional terms, they are quite often expressing their recognition of their failing and their desire to overcome it. This is overwhelmingly true if the conversation they were in didn't really require them to comment one way or another on themselves.For example, if someone says 'I'm very good at keeping secrets,' you will make long-term money betting that that person cannot keep a secret.

"If someone says 'I'm really good at juggling a bunch of different tasks' you can be confident that that person really really needs to focus on just one thing at a time. If someone says 'I'm an especially safe driver,' you can be sure that at any time they are not actively thinking about driving safely they will be way too close to the bumper of the car in front of them.

"I used to call this the Big Lie. And I'm not pointing fingers; we all have roughly the same genetic code. After I became aware of this I caught myself gratuitously telling people how I was good at managing time and being on time, and I believed it as I said it. But when I caught myself in the act I immediately saw that I aspired to be a great time manager because that is what I am not."

Michael Perini: "If you try to think, speak and act as though the thing you want is already true, it will more likely become true (as long as you are willing and able to do the work required to achieve it). Making your intentions known and working toward them is a very powerful thing. As James Allen said, 'Move confidently in the direction of your own dreams,' which is really the power of intention. People who wake up every day determined to make progress toward a goal are far more likely to achieve it. Announcing it to the world in a kind and thoughtful way, will bring you unexpected help. As you point out, there are different ways to say the same things, the way that displays your intention and willingness to work toward it will bring more satisfaction over the long run...I've seen it play out a thousand times. Does it always work? Of course not, but it works better than the alternatives."

James: "Talking of smells and ambiguity...I am trying a new deodorant stick today. Instructions say 'remove cap and push up bottom.' I can hardly walk but when I fart the room smells lovely."

Mike replies: All right. You go to the back of the class and sit facing the wall, James.

Posted on Tuesday, 04 September 2018 at 12:25 PM in Off-topic posts, Open Mike | | Comments (31)

Friday, 10 August 2018

Open Mike: What I Did On My Day Off (OT)

Awake
Well, I had a pretty amazing day yesterday. I'm in a 12-step fellowship, and yesterday I finished one step and took three more. Progress! (If anyone wants to know more you're welcome to contact me privately.)

There are many 12-step programs. Wikipedia says, "twelve-step methods have been adapted to address a wide range of alcoholism, substance-abuse and dependency problems. Over 200 self-help organizations—often known as fellowships—with a worldwide membership of millions—now employ twelve-step principles for recovery." In many of these, one of the steps is: "Made a fearless and searching moral inventory of ourselves." I was determined to be as thorough as possible, so the inventory step was hard on me. I have a lot of unresolved anger and also a lot of defenses—grandiosity and rationalization and the like—mental bad habits that were blocking me from a realistic self-appraisal. As I worked on the step, as the anger came out and as the defense mechanisms, one by one, became exposed and had to be stripped away...well, it's been a tortured, turbulent stretch.

The last step I took yesterday is the relief step. And I'm feelin' it. Feeling happy today. So glad to be looking at the inventory step in the rearview mirror.

Asleep
The other thing I did yesterday, as if that weren't enough, was to get fitted for a modern CPAP machine. I met in a conference room in Geneva with a well-spoken and agile-minded nurse named Lori. I have sleep apnea, a malady that causes you to stop breathing intermittently during the night. Which doesn't sound serious, but (as with the use of addictive substances, come to think), it's a curious affliction in that it runs the range from trivial to lethal. It contributed to the death at age 43 of the great Eagles and Packers defensive end Reggie White, for one.

I tried a CPAP machine once before, in 2013, but wasn't able to adjust to it. But, as with many things, technology has marched on, and the new machines are much better than those of only a few years ago. The one I'm "renting" is a ResMed AirSense 10 (pretty sure it's available only with a doctor's prescription). It has a humidifier and a heated air tube, and it's very quiet.

I haven't adjusted to it yet, but after waking up for a while in the middle of the night, I slept till 10:30 this morning, which is amazing. I'm never able to sleep that late any more.

I'm not very close to getting used to this machine—gotta be patient—but let's just say I have high hopes. 

Before you know it, I'm going to be ready for the onset of old age! Yeah, yeah, I know, it'll probably kill me eventually. I've heard that about it. But bring it on, baby.

Mike

"Open Mike" is the anything goes, often off-topic Editorial page of TOP, wherein Yr. Hmbl. Ed. is let out of the cage for a spell and allowed to wander around unsupervised.

*That's not quite as bad as it sounds, because my sponsor spends the winters in Florida, a very handy excuse for procrastination that lasted many months.

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

fred: "How did the sleep apnea diagnosis come about for you? I'm curious about the signs of this malady and what to watch for. Stay well Mike!"

Mike replies: My primary care doctor ordered a home sleep study because I complained of chronic early morning awakenings. The study diagnosed mile OSA, severe when I'm sleeping on my back (which I do sometimes because my shoulders hurt! Ah, youth, where didst thou go...). Do read Michael's comment below, Fred.

Michael Sebastian: "Mike, glad you got your CPAP fitted. Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) is probably the most common cause of cardiac failure in people without blocked coronary arteries, and is a significant contributor to high blood pressure (hypertension) and atrial fibrillation. It’s truly a silent killer, and under-appreciated for its carnage until recently. I know this because I’m both an OSA patient and an anesthesiologist; this stuff is right in my wheelhouse. OSA poses quite a few challenges, also, when someone comes to my OR for an anesthetic.

"When you airway obstructs during sleep, your sleep patterns (REM et al) are disrupted, so you are never truly rested. During obstructions, your blood oxygen levels drop precipitously, and your carbon-dioxide levels rise. These changes cause blood vessels in the lungs to constrict, which means your heart has to pump blood through your lungs against a much higher than normal resistance. After a time, the lung blood-vessel changes become irreversible, and spill over onto the heart itself.

"I’ve been using CPAP for nearly a dozen years. I always snored like a sawmill, even at a fit 175 pounds as a high school athlete. But as the years and pounds accumulated, it got much worse, until my wife issued an ultimatum: sleep testing, or sleep on the couch. My OSA was so bad they stopped the test after only four hours, and put the CPAP on me. I would likely be dead by now if I hadn’t gotten treated.

"I’ve always used the 'nasal pillows' rather than the full face mask, and never had much problem adjusting. I recall waking up the morning after my first night of CPAP; no headache, felt rested for the first time in years. No more nodding off at the wheel with the afternoon sun in my face.

"So guys, if you snore heavily; if you have a thick neck and/or too many pounds; if you stop breathing at night; if you wake up frequently with a headache; if you are often tired and sleepy during the day; if you have hypertension or atrial fibrillation or other heart disease—be sure your doctor tests you for OSA.

"And Mike is correct: CPAP requires a prescription."

Tim Smith: "I'm still adjusting to the idea that one can become acquainted with a complete stranger via a computer. Over the years I've witnessed your breakthroughs, challenges, parenting experiences, vacuum purchases, and medical issues, and many more tales of a very personal nature. While it's true that I have made other 'friends' via social media (people I've never met in person but consider a friend), you are the one that is closest to 'celebrity.' Now I want to say something like 'In real life...' but it has become increasingly difficult to separate what happens while walking and talking from what happens when typing and scrolling. Whatever facet of reality this is, I wish you nothing but success and easy, good fortune."

Mike replies: Thank you Tim, and back at you.

Posted on Friday, 10 August 2018 at 02:55 PM in Off-topic posts, Open Mike | | Comments (16)

Monday, 30 July 2018

Open Mike: If You Are Depressed (OT)

I won't lie—I've been going through a tough time lately. To my huge relief, though, my depression seems to have lifted in the past day and a half. I'm back to feeling blessedly...normal. A fragile-seeming state, which I dearly hope will last. And so, before I depart for my regular Monday-morning pool group, a brief public service announcement for the benefit of other people like myself....

My brother Charlie and I play a game in which we try to name the biggest changes of our lifetimes. (He was born in 1959, I in '57.) Personal computers took the number one slot for a while, then the Internet; now it's smartphones. But we each have other ideas as well. For example, the improved reliability of cars makes my list. Well, Charlie's a medical doctor (double-boarded in pediatrics and internal medicine), and one of the items on his list is the effectiveness of antidepressants.

I should write a book about the vagaries of language and their semi-unconscious effect on our con- and perceptions. One negative example is the fact that "depressed" is common slang (yes, slang, when used in this context) for "feeling kinda low." We all have mood swings. It's truly too bad that we say things like "I'm so depressed!" when we don't happen to be feeling happy, bubbly, and full of fun. Clinical depression, which I've suffered from intermittently since early adolescence, is not a normal or ordinary state. It's a different beast altogether.

And it's not remotely benign, either. To put it simply, depression kills. It's a big killer, too. It deprives sufferers of hope, and hope is one of the essential necessities of life—a mental/psychological one, yes, and maybe not quite as essential as air or water, but right up there with shelter and group alliances. The statistics are not hard and fast, but roughly as many U.S. Americans will die of suicide caused by depression this year as will be killed in automobile accidents.

Help exists, and it's getting more effective. If you, or especially your children (who can't demystify it for themselves) are suffering from persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness, I urge you to seek medical help. Working with a prescribing psychiatrist (i.e., no accompanying talk therapy), I was on a course of antidepressants from about 2001 to mid-2005, and it changed my life...it "raised my low" considerably. Although I still have a tough time with the disease from time to time (can't lie), I can honestly say that I never get as depressed now as I used to get all the time.

It's no accident that TOP started just after mid-2005, after my doctor decided the course of antidepressants had been successful, and I had slowly become convinced that the black dog was safely in abeyance.

It's very tough to see hope when it's been taken away from you. But if you too are depressed, there is hope. Seek it.

More soon. I'm very excited to see my pool-playing friend Norm today—he finally shot below his age last week on the golf course! An 89 at age 93. His longtime goal. Awesome*!

Mike

*Translated to British: Brilliant.

"Open Mike" is the anything-goes, off-topic Editorial page of TOP. I'm on very shaky ground mentioning that it's supposed to appear on Wednesdays.

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Dan Gorman: "Many thanks for this, Mike. I've never suffered from clinical depression myself, but I have family members and close friends who do, and from what I've observed, your explication is spot on. Your honesty and empathy are part of what makes TOP so special. If only a handful of your readers take your advice and get medical help, then this may be the best post you've ever written. Best wishes."

Richard Parkin: "Awesome*!

*Translated to British: Brilliant**

**Translated to English: Not half bad***

***Translated to Yorkshire: Champion."

Tom: "I learned only yesterday that an old friend had chosen to end her life after many years of depression and spells in and out of hospital. I feel a sense of guilt that I could not help although rationally I know there is little I could ever have done. Thank you for this post Mike, there's nothing I can add by way of comment other than to say I stand in solidarity with you."

Mike replies: Sorry for your loss Tom.

Posted on Monday, 30 July 2018 at 09:40 AM in Off-topic posts, Open Mike | | Comments (42)

Wednesday, 18 July 2018

Wednesday Open Mike: My Printing Problem

It's not easy to admit to having problems that are essentially psychological. Whatever we might believe about the situation ourselves, there's a stigma attached. So I reacted badly at first when Brian Stewart asked: 

"Whatever happened to your adventures in inkjet printing that started close to two years ago, Mike? A well-crafted print is a beautiful thing."

To quote my late friend and mentor David Vestal, I'm in the disclosure business, so after I stewed (sorry!) about it for a while I opted to answer honestly:

"I tend to fixate on the cost of materials, paper and especially ink," I wrote back, in a little note appended to the comment. "This is a psychological problem, like my irrational fear of dentists (I sometimes cannot talk myself into keeping appointments), but knowing that doesn't make it less difficult to deal with."

Jack Stivers chimed in: "Re your response to Brian Stewart, I, too, get fixated on ink and paper costs. A set of 12 'tanks' for my Canon Pro 1 costs $350. Given I only paid $450 (via a one-day special deal at B&H a few years ago) for the printer, I can't bring myself to nearly double that cost by buying a full set of tanks. The tanks included with the printer ran dry long before I was near being proficient with the printer. So all 70 pounds of the great hulking howitzer, er, Canon, sits on a table in my office like a huge, black paperweight gathering dust and mocking me."

That made me feel a little better. But I don't feel good about it. The baseline fact is that I don't think I can afford paper and ink, and so using it up makes me feel anxious. And of course we tend to avoid doing things that cause us to suffer anxiety.

Part of the anxiety is my background conviction that I'm being exploited—a grittier word is cheated—by ink prices. Falsely high ink prices are part of the common model for making money selling printers, like Gillette sticking it to you for their good but way, way overpriced razor blade cartridges. But the same thing is true at McDonalds, where they make all their money on french fries and soda, selling everything else at cost*, as well as with the prototype, razor blades, an industry that Harry's and Dollar Shave Club (now owned by Unilever) are currently trying to disrupt.

I do recognize that my anxiety is somewhat irrational, like my avoidance problem with the dentist (I don't feel I can afford that, either). I used to budget up to $3,000 annually for film, chemicals, and silver gelatin (enlarging) paper, so why can't I just do the same thing with the inkjet printer? It really doesn't make a lot of sense.

And I wish it weren't so. But I gotta be honest: it's a problem for me. One that is, to quote another great man, Yogi Berra, is ninety percent half mental. At least with Jack on my side I don't feel completely alone.

Mike

*By some analyses McDonalds is actually a huge real estate corporation that plunks restaurants on properties merely as a way of defraying holding costs. I'm no expert.

"Open Mike" is the not always off-topic editorial page of TOP. It's supposed to appear on Wednesdays...what is today, anyway?

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Timo Virojärvi: I am also rather—umm, let's say—cost conscious when it comes to running costs. However I am not that bothered by buying expensive stuff, so for me the solution was to buy a 44-inch printer. Ink per milliliter is not expensive in 330 ml cartridges and roll paper is much less expensive than small sheets for the same area. Of course the big cartridges and paper rolls cost a lot, but I don't have buy them often. What matters is that each print is really inexpensive, so I am not bothered at all by the cost of actual printing. I also print a bit for others, which helps to cover the material costs and is fun, too. I know this is doesn't really make sense economically, but suits my psychological profile perfectly."

Jim Dobbins: "Thanks! I feel much better now. I have the same problem and viewed it as a personal failing. Now I realize that it might be just the nature of owning an inkjet printer."

JAYoung: "I simply don't make enough prints to justify the costs of maintaining a good color printer at home. When I want a quality print I take a thumb drive to my locally owned Insty-Prints and use their latest printer and fresh ink. If I want snapshot prints I can go to Walmart and do the same. I picked up a Brother B&W laser printer for text printing at home and it's always ready when I need it."

Robert Newcomb: "I wondered why you said this yesterday, 'Most pictures exist only on screens, and that's as it should be.' I don't agree with this but it's what you said."

Mike replies: Well, because it's the nature of the media. When most photographers shot B&W film, when developed we had a negative, and it generally had to be printed to be able to see it. (Slides were the major exception, and those needed to be projected to be seen properly.) Thus prints—at least contact prints—were not only natural but necessary, an integral part of the process. Larger prints were needed for viewing or reproduction. Now, pictures are taken using digital sensors and naturally displayed on screens—computer screens, device screens, etc.—and it's not necessary to make prints as part of the process of seeing and sharing them. That's all I meant.

Kenneth Tanaka: "Your printing expense anxiety is not at all irrational, Mike. Today's home printing products and techniques are sublime. But they ain't cheap. Ink is expensive. Good paper can be expensive. (Personally, I feel that paper is where economies can be achieved. But that's another story.)

"But images not printed are images headed for extinction. Here are two thoughts, for whatever they may be worth. First, reallocate your budget. Instead of replacing equipment spend that money on printing. Unless you’re doing commercial or stock work with specific requirements, prints will be far more valuable to you personally than more gear in the long term. Second consider outsourcing your printing. There are several excellent, well-capitalized printing services that have established themselves in recent years. Their costs tend to be very reasonable and their products, in my experience, excellent. Plus they tend to offer more alternatives than you could ever provide for yourself. The incremental costs are going to at least seem lower than home printing. You have to print, Mike. It’s not a negotiable item. It’s fundamental for your photographic cred."

Geoff Wittig: "To me this is one of the genuine advantages of the bigger 24-inch wide 'professional' inket printers. They're costly enough in terms of the up-front investment that the marginal cost of additional ink tanks doesn't seem so irrational. The Canon Pro-2000 I'm using now is 'only' $2,300 brand new at B&H. (For a bit of perspective, that's about the same as a brand-name 80–200mm ƒ/2.8 zoom; but I've gotten much more joy from the printer than the lens.) The cost of an additional full set of 12 ink tanks was about $1,000; but I just installed the first replacement tank this week, after using the printer for the better part of a year, so they should last me at least another 6–8 months, and I print quite a bit. Paper likewise is rather more economical at large rather than smaller sizes; even the gorgeous Canson platine fiber rag paper is 'only' about $170 for a 24"x 50' roll, which is not too horrible per square foot. I find it pure joy to print a 24x36" image on a whim after playing with it in Photoshop and getting it to where I really like it. To me it's self-evidently a completely different art form when compared to a 1000-pixel-wide JPEG on a monitor. I consider it a no-brainer; the quality of my work, and my enjoyment of photography, have both gained far more from my investment in a large format printer than (say) a single new camera body or two lenses of similar aggregate cost."

David Bennett: "As my Economics professor said: 'Why are Kodak cameras so cheap? Because Kodak film is so expensive.'

"As a way out, have you thought of printing very small? Maybe that doesn't scratch your itch, but maybe you could produce a thing of beauty."

Mike replies: That's what I'm doing currently—making small prints from my iPhone project files. Ironically (given current fashions) they work best if they're not too large. The best one is 6x8" in size.

Richard Skoonberg: "Here are my two cents. So I have a Canon PIXMA Pro-100 (13x19) printer which uses dye ink instead of pigment ink. A dye ink print is supposed to last 100 years whereas a pigment print should last about 200 years. To replace the eight inks in my Canon is about $114 on Amazon and the Canon Papers are cheaper too. I see a lot of prints from other photographers who have Epson pigment printers and truthfully I cannot tell the difference. But the Pro-100 doesn't clog or require the maintenance that the pigment printers do. which is great. If I need to print something for a gallery, I will usually print it larger 20x30 and I will send it out and get a pigment print. The place I usually go to charges $30 a print. The rebates on the Pro-100s make it a real bargain."

Rob de Loe (partial comment): "I read an interesting counterpoint over at Andrew Molitor's blog. He points out, correctly I fear, that with very few exceptions, nobody will care about whatever prints you make in 100 years (and likely sooner).

"So just go ahead and make prints with cheaper materials if printing makes you happy. Consider using non-archival papers, good quality third party inks, etc. Let it go and just print!"

Mike replies: Here's my problem with dye inks. Again, it's partly psychological. I was badly burned in the early days of inkjet printers by dye inksets. I worked very hard making excellent prints that turned out not to be lightfast at all—even in the pages of a closed(!) album a strip at the tops of the prints faded from daylight getting in from above—and this was indoors. Granted, the Pro-100 is supposed to be radically better than early dye printers. But once bitten and all that.

The PIXMA Pro-100 is the best-selling photo printer. It's economical to buy and run. I haven't researched specific print LE with that model and don't have a sense of the reliability of the claims. It does use three inks for B&W.

As for Rob's "let it go and just print," the reason it's not appealing is that I might have to do the work again. I'd rather do it right the first time and not have to worry about it later. That attitude matches the care I put into getting it right. Using ephemeral materials risks wasting the effort and attention you invest in the output. I'd say that the materials should fit the amount of time and effort you put into the printing: if you are casual and just churn stuff out, then, fine, use cheaper materials. But the more time and effort you spend crafting the output, the less sense it makes to use cheap materials and the more sense it makes to use the best materials. Whether "nobody will care" is not an issue, because I care.

Stanleyk (partial comment): "Here's one for you: A little over a year ago I ordered a replacement set of tanks from B&H. The UPS guy threw them over the neighbor's fence. Charlie, my neighbor's dog, destroyed the entire set of 12 tanks. Now that was expensive.... :-)

Brian Stewart [The OP —Ed.]: "My question was prompted by your apparent initial enthusiasm in printing, which then went quiet. I wasn't expecting that response, but in hindsight, perhaps I should have. If it's any consolation, you're absolutely not alone. Just about everyone who starts doing their own inkjet printing hits this obstacle. It may be a fear, but it's not at all irrational.

"The pleasure derived from the outputs and the creative process does eventually outweigh the pain caused by the inputs. A well-crafted print is a beautiful thing. As you said, we agonised less over the equivalent darkroom costs. Part of the problem is that inkjets can churn out prints faster than I could in a darkroom, and, unlike printers, enlargers didn't clog and wear out.

"The obstacle I had thought you might have hit, and one I still struggle with, is what to do with all those prints? Brooks Jensen of Lenswork has written and spoken about the 'pile of prints' problem, given that there's only so much wall space, and exhibition possibilities and print sales are not that common. I think that confronting the growing pile of prints and finding your own solution is a larger obstacle."

egads: "Mike! No! You sold me my printer and I love it! There are kids who look up to you! Well, I’m 36, anyway. Er, 37. I don’t feel the pinch so much, because I print small: 4x6 mostly, in batches of my best work every two-three weeks. I hang them with clips from a string across my living room wall, rotating them at whim, and occasionally decide I want to see one bigger. It’s a great pleasure. Thank you for that."

Fritz (partial comment): "If I could not print, at least the best of my images, I probably would no longer do photography. And if nobody (except me) could ever see the prints, I would probably also stop."

MikeR: "Philosophical question: what is the cost/benefit justification for a Miata? Walsh speakers? A Vitamix? Anything 'audiophile?' Some people really like boats—a hole in the water into which you throw money. I have a pilot license and no plane. I would love to own a plane. Economic justification? Why? A passion overrides economics. Since a plane is out of reach for me; next in line to throw money at is photography."

Posted on Wednesday, 18 July 2018 at 10:53 AM in Open Mike, Printers and Printing | | Comments (75)

Friday, 06 July 2018

Open Mike: The Old-Style American (OT)

I had a lovely two days off. The weather was Summery yesterday, but beautifully cool-ish and brilliantly sunny today. I feel revived and rejuvenated. We didn't even have that many firecrackers this year, praise God. Hope you had a nice Fourth, if you celebrated.

Sisters-small

Mormon missionaries from Idaho, the Philippines, and Texas at the
Peter Whitmer Log Home Historic Site in Fayette, New York.
The roots of Mormonism are in our area.

As you know, a lot of TOP is off-topic. Photography is an offshoot of my interest in the world, and we touch on this, that and the other thing from time to time, just as I find fascination in all manner of the things that can be seen with a camera.

In 2013 I even regaled you with a story about...a washing machine.

I know—Mike, right?

Well, settle back. It's been a touch more than five years since then, and I have an update.

As you can read if you visit or revisit that link, my old machine was a 1972 Maytag made in the American small town of Newton, Iowa. I inherited it in 2000 when it was an impressive 28 years old.

Even more impressively, despite its age, I used it for 14 more years without a single problem. At that point I intended to keep it through thick and thin, and see how long it would continue to soldier on. Basically just out of a sense of gratitude. And curiosity—how long could it go on?

(Search "Elections: Anger In The Land" on YouTube if you want to see the 2009 "60 Minutes" piece involving Maytag that inspired that first post in 2013.)

But alas, I sold that house in 2014, and the real estate agent put the kibosh on my fealty to the Maytag. "The laundry machines should convey," she decreed. And so they did. Most probably the new owners of the house replaced them—they remodeled the whole house—but I haven't checked with them to find out.

Cut to now
So here's the other bookend of that sad story: my current laundry machine just came within a hair of getting totaled. By a broken power switch button. At the ripe old age of...six.

SIX.

It's a front-loading Kenmore. Here's the story as far as I've been able to figure it out: Kenmore is not a manufacturer, it's a rebrand or relabel. Various manufacturers make Kenmore products for Sears. My Kenmore was made by LG—specifically, the Home Appliance and Air Solution Division of LG Electronics, which is headquartered in Seoul, South Korea. With 82,000 employees worldwide, LG is the fourth-largest "chaebol" in South Korea. Wikipedia defines chaebol as "a large number of diversified affiliates, controlled by an owner whose power over the group often exceeds legal authority." Gulp.

Going from large to small, the power switch on my washing machine is a round plastic button on the front of the unit.

...Which broke. It stopped popping back out after you press it in. Sometimes it gets jammed and causes the machine's electronics to temporarily go haywire.

No problem, right? It's just a little button switch. Just replace it.

Not so fast.

To begin with, I should mention that the machine has already had one horrendously expensive repair, in January of '17. Something went wrong with a part called "the board" and the replacement and its installation cost more than half of the retail cost of the entire machine. A/C surges were blamed—described to me as "a known problem"—so I got a surge protector. For the washing machine.

This time, it turns out you can't just replace the faulty button. You have to replace the entirety of something called "the panel." A new "panel" and its installation was going to cost me "hundreds."

For a faulty power switch.

Yikes, right? But again, not so fast. Come to find out, "the panel" is no longer available. If the machine required a new panel, even at the cost of hundreds of dollars, too bad. Can't be had.

You're getting this, I'm sure: if anything on "the panel" breaks, a Sears Kenmore washing machine bought new in 2012 can longer be repaired at all.

Why? Well, this is supposition, not fact, but anecdotal evidence suggests that apparently "the panel" was breaking left and right on this particular model of LG front-loader two and three years into its model lifespan, and the warranty replacements were costing LG too much money. So, being a huge multinational with vast resources, LG cleverly solved its problem. It just stopped making the replacement part. Voilà, no more expense! Ain't business school grand?

So anyway, to keep my now obsolescent six-year-old washing machine limping along into the future, I've figured out a workaround. I snipped the pin off a plastic push-pin and Crazy-Glued it to the on-off switch. If I'm gentle with it and push it just so, I can get the power to turn on without having the button jam. Meanwhile, though, I have to be aware that the next time the bloody little basta stops working, chances are fair that my whole machine's goose is cooked and a new sh!##% washing machine will have to get drained out of the "non-recurring recurrables" line in the budget. (That's my brother Charlie's term, and I like it. Life is full of non-recurring recurrables. The term basically means "something unforeseen is gonna cost you a big chunk a' money at random every now and then, and you never know what.")

So what's the most reliable brand of washing machine these days? Answer: none of them. American clothes washing machines from the post-war period were made to last 20 years routinely, and often lasted for 30 years. When last seen alive, my ancient Maytag—an outlier, a survivor—was 42 years old and still going strong. It's possible it was dispatched to the landfill still working! Now, they're all designed to break within ten years. Some last longer than that, but just as many don't make it that long.

They want you to have to buy a new one. Bad for you and me and our budgets, and for the environment, but good for business.

As for me, it's absolutely true that I might be a Luddite, but give me that old-style Maytag, man. I'm an old-style American, and I still hew forlornly to the quaint old obsolescent belief that the purpose of an economy is to support a society, rather than the other way around.

Mike

"Open Mike" is the anything-goes, often off-topic Editorial page of TOP. It usually appears mid-week.

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Benjamin Marks: "Arrrrgh. I say, again, 'Arrrgh.' I just replaced a Kenmore dishwasher, that had multiple problems over the ten years we owned it. The 'board' was replaced three times. The 'panel' twice. We were something like $10 away from having used so many repair services that we would have been entitled to a new machine under the terms of our old service contract.

"In fact, we spent three times as much as the retail cost of the machine on service contracts guaranteed to keep us in 'boards' and 'panels' until Kingdom Come. Until, that is, the Mother Ship announced a price increase in the service contract. 'That's It!' I cried, and pronounced that the next problem with the 'board' or the 'panel' would be the machine's last and that it would be sent to the 'farm' along with a dog of my wife's family that bit a neighbor's kid (not too badly, but still...).

"Having made this announcement, the infernal machine bided its time. It developed non-terminal ticks. It developed eccentricities. Its penchant for trouble coincided eerily with three-day weekends and times when plumbers might be less likely to be working. Christmas. It took an unexplained three day Yuletide hiatus and then, as I reached for the phone to seal its fate, mysteriously recovered. It began blinking at us from the corner of the room and emitting dulcet beeps at irregular intervals. The beeps bore an uncanny similarity in pitch and tone to the alarm indicating that our septic system pumps had failed. I would wake in the night, attuned to the house's arrhythmia, only to find that it was the dish washer beeping, muted, without pattern, in the night.

"We considered having a local shaman come and work his magic,or at least to intercede for us in reasonable tones, or as a last resort to make threats of astonishing specificity and violence. Two days before this past July 4th, the machina infernal declared its own independence. Its indicator lights started cycling (Morse code?)and its control buttons were dead to our touch. Our standby black magic of 'turning it off and turning it on again' at the basement fuse panel/junction box had no apparent effect.

"And so its fate was sealed. As of yesterday, an anodyne Bosch sits in its place, placid and silent. It is so quiet when it runs, it has to shine a little red LED towards the floor to visually announce its functioning status. 'We hardly have any trouble with these,' said the installer, in chipper tones. We shall see. We. Shall. See."

Mike replies: That comment was better than the post.  :-)

russell: "Ain’t it the truth...they don’t make 'em like they used to. I have Sears washer and dryer bought in 1991 that have gone through two boys. Both boys now have their own kids. About six months back the washer would not turn on. I searched the 'Net with brand and model number. Lo and behold there are at least four sites with how-to-fix-it instructions and videos. Turned out to be the safety switch on the lid. Had to take the thing apart to replace the switch and without the video instructions I would never have figured out how to do it. A month back the dryer would only supply heat for ~five minutes—back to the 'Net. Turned out to be a couple of faulty values—$43 in parts, two hours on the garage floor and several banged knuckles later...it's fixed.

"Plus, I found $4.35 in loose change in the bowels of the machine."

Robert Harshman: "Yeah, they really used to build things to last. My Mom still has a toaster—I know, not nearly as complex as a washer, but—she got it as a wedding gift over 75 years ago. It still works just fine. Still makes toast just fine, even though it can not 'print' designs on the toast like a few modern toasters can. It simply works as intended for over 75 years and was pretty much in daily use over that time. Given my family size and number of years at home based on say 2.5 toasted pieces of bread per day that's almost 70,000 toasted successes over it lifetime.

"The toaster is in a kind of retirement now. It's still with her, but since she moved into a retirement home last year it has not been used. Once she passes away, I'll take it and see if I can get to 100 years of toast!"

kirk tuck: "Hand made Swiss washing machines are the best. Here's the link you need. Multiple kinds of currency accepted. You pay shipping. Built like an Alpa. More expensive than my car...but boy are my clothes ever clean."

Mike replies: You have one?!?

Kirk replies to Mike: "No, I have a Kenmore from 22 years ago that my repair person advised me to keep forever. Just thought the idea of a Swiss washer and dryer would so hook many of your readers that I could not resist...."

Craig Yuill (partial comment): "If you really like the old top loaders then consider Speed Queen top loaders, which are still being built in Wisconsin. I understand that they are based on an Amana model built around 1990, and know from first-hand experience that they are built like old-fashioned top loaders."

Mike replies: I'm certainly no expert in washing machines, nor an enthusiast of them, but there are enthusiasts of them, and apparently there is a tempest-in-a-teacup controversy about the new Speed Queens: the 2018 top-loaders were apparently designed to use up front-loader parts—at least according to three guys named Harley, Spats and Sharkey—and are not Speed Queens to the manner born.

Speed queen guyHarley relating the group "epiphany" (his word) about the 2018 Speed
Queens. I would tend to trust these guys, because what's there
to gain from faking being a fanboy of washing machines?

Can't trust anything, eh?

Posted on Friday, 06 July 2018 at 01:01 PM in Off-topic posts, Open Mike | | Comments (66)

Wednesday, 20 June 2018

Open Mike: King of Nuthin'

I wish I had some actual power in the world. I wish I was in charge of something I knew something about. I think I'd be good at it—I have lots of ideas, and I'm good at thinking in terms of systems, the so-called "big picture," rather than just details.

I found myself musing after yesterday's post how I'd set up a graduate program in studio art for photography. To begin with, I'd make it a two-year program (working through the Summer in the middle), because three years is just excessive given the unlikely prospects of a practical job after it's over [wry, even sheepish, grin].

The time would be divided into three units or segments. I'd have students begin by shooting intensively with a film Leica and one 50mm lens in B&W for the first eight months (Sept.–April)—but I wouldn't have them learn darkroom work beyond having it demonstrated to them. They'd use Ilford XP2 with lab support, receiving enlarged proofs of their developed film. In February they'd be asked to add a wide-angle and a moderate telephoto lens to their equipment and spend the last three months of the unit shooting with all three lenses. During this segment we'd concentrate on meaning, and on reportage/documentary approaches, and the main technique emphasis would be on editing skills.

Then we'd switch to...smartphones. From May through the following September, they'd be required to shoot with one of a limited selection of high-end phone cameras. During this unit we'd minimize discussions of technique and review pictures only on screens. This unit would lean heavily on the traditional critique and group discussion method of teaching, and concentrate on personal expression and aesthetic experimentation, with the emphasis placed on visualizing, inventiveness, and creative failure.

In October of the second year, we'd switch to medium-format digital cameras, again with a choice of three or four types, using up to three lenses of the student's choice. For the first half of this unit, we'd concentrate on learning post-processing skills, workflow, and asset management, with the overarching goal of intensively learning printing technique; the concentration until March would be on learning to make prints. During this time we would work intensively on viewing and deconstructing historical photographs, both important and demotic. (Washington D.C. would be a good locale for this program because of its museum and archive resources.) In the last few weeks of that time, working with faculty advisors, students would design a thesis project.

Finally, in March-April-May, still using their medium-format digital cameras, the students would be freed to pursue their vision for their thesis, including, if warranted, traveling to locations of their choice several times for several weeks each time, returning intermittently to edit and print finished prints of their work. The goal would be to produce a portfolio project in the form of 15 to 40 sequenced fine prints in an archival box, along with a custom book of the same pictures in the same sequence.

That's just off the top of my head. Give me a year and I'd refine that brief sketch into a syllabus that would hit on all cylinders.

Like all my other pie-in-the-sky ideas, this stands zero chance of ever happening. But oh boy, it would be effective...and a whole lot of fun. I'd see to both, baby.  :-)

Mike

"Open Mike" is the often off-topic editorial page of TOP. It appears on Wednesdays, if I think of it.

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Dan Khong: "In Singapore, at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts (NAFA), all students studying photography for a career go through a darkroom module. These students shoot in B&W film and process all the way to print their pictures out in the traditional darkroom. Of course 99.99% of graduating students will shoot with digital for a living but the school reckons that a basic and hands-on knowledge of traditional photography will enrich their understanding of photography."

Manuel: "With the exception of the smartphone part, the structure and timeline of your graduation programme are not too different from the professional photography courses held by the Portuguese Institute of Photography, but I can see a problem with your daydream programme—cost. Tuition fees would have to be insanely high to cover all expenses. (Unless students brought their own equipment, which would mean they would be millionaires who could afford Leica and Phase One cameras.) I will leave aside my prejudice about smartphones because your idea is a rather clever one. Forgetting about technique to concentrate on expression would be smart. To my knowledge, professional courses don't tend to evaluate subjectivity and expression. They prepare students to master technique, but are oblivious to originality and creativity. So I'd say 'go for it', or 'chase your dream,' but it would be a rather expensive dream. While we're at it, did you think of a scholarship plan? If so, how do I apply?"

Mike replies: You see, the program exists only in my imagination. Therefore cost is not an issue, because in my imagination it never is. It's kind of like television sitcoms, where almost everyone always has enough money or more than enough money (e.g. the spacious NYC apartments on the old show "Friends," or their famous "magic couch," which was somehow always available for them to sit on in the otherwise crowded city café where they liked to hang out), or the movies, where "policemen" can go about leaving trails of bodies in their wake not only with no consequences, but not even any inconvenience to themselves either—that is, it's just one of those things we don't worry about, but dismiss with a wave of the hand.

I have an embarrassing number of projects in my daydreams. For instance, I have a quite detailed fantasy about a County Community Center; I've designed houses; I've devised a clever plan to save the game of pool in America; I'm a camera manufacturer, as you might expect, and the cameras are unlike anything on the market; I've solved the obesity epidemic; and I've got a detailed plan for a new basketball league called "The Six-Foot League" in which, among many other shall we say "innovative" rules, all the players must be under 6'1" tall.

I've written many screenplays. In my head.

Those are just a few of many.

And in all of these plans, amazingly enough, funding is never an issue. In fact, the only thing I cannot apply any imagination or creativity to, for some reason, are plans the purpose of which would be making money for myself! More's the pity pour moi.

Michael Perini: "I’m sure some of your ideas would be helpful. We all have those 'if I were the boss' thoughts and desires. But for better or worse those jobs get filled by people who have spent a career preparing and 'growing into' such positions at that or similar institutions—whatever the field. Once you have the top job , the landscape rarely looks the same as it did from outside. Your ideas might be very good but still face tough sledding. People who are charging/paying $20k/semester might raise eyebrows at spending one shooting on an iPhone...even if it proved to be a good idea...."

Dave Van de Mark: "I’m ready—what is the cost of enrollment? Leicas! Medium Format! Travel! Too much to pass up and I’ll take my chances regarding no job at the end.  :-)  "

John Krill: "Yes, I know smartphones are the future. But that doesn't mean I have to accept that future. I love to make prints. 13x19 prints of my best stuff. On paper that costs me about $5 a sheet. Make prints from a smartphone files? I think not. So I guess I would be sick or, better yet, in Paris when you have your smartphone section. Also, I don't even have a smartphone and considering what they bite you for each month I probably never will."

Mike replies: I felt just that way until my readers challenged me to get to grips with iPhonography about five years ago. In the spirit of experimentation (or open-mindedness) I reluctantly decided to embrace it for three months or so, which was the period of time I chose in the '80s to use a camera I was reviewing. At first I couldn't wait for that three months to end. Five years later I have to say the iPhone is a constant photographic delight, and one I've even managed to do some serious work with—my most recent project was a 15-picture portfolio of iPhone pictures. I admit the prints are miniatures, smaller than your standard—the largest one is not quite 11 inches in the longest dimension, and most of the others are considerably smaller than that.

Unbalanced sunset-small

iPhone snap taken on the way home from the Spiritual
Center of the Universe last night. Kinda typical. I just play with the thing.

Spencer H: "I like it. My school went like this: B&W digital only for the first year, no color assignments. We had a simple B&W conversion workflow, starting simple and adding complexity of the course of the year. Second year, we introduced color, and medium format digital, in the form of Leaf Aptus backs attached to view cameras, and those stayed in the studio where we learned lighting. I remember hating some of the restrictions we had (not being able to use Lighroom chief among them, then a brand-new program, and instead using some archaic DAM platform, long defunct), but looking back, the restrictions like B&W, studio only, or whatever it was forced my creativity and problem solving to high gear."

Kenneth Tanaka: "My own curriculum would be (surprise!) diametrically opposite yours. The overall philosophy of the program would be to first help students learn to see and to get in touch with what they’re seeing. Throughout the first term students would be studying/critiquing imagery across many media and many ages, from last week's New York Times to Carleton Watkins's landscapes.

"Next, they'd apply that awareness by learning to assemble coherent frames (with any digital camera/lens) that accomplish predetermined objectives. One of the most stark differences between amateurs and trained photographers is this ability to compose a coherent, sophisticated frame.

"Then on to specific areas of professional practice applications such as portraiture, documentary, etc. I would offer exposure to the basic camera technologies of the day, as well as a solid grounding in digital processing and printing...but only at the end of the curriculum.

"I would not offer any classes in chemical photography or other techniques of yesteryear. If a kid’s paying me $25–30k/year for photographic training s/he should expect to at least gain skills that will prospectively endure for a lifetime. If someone wants to learn how to make a platinum print or daguerreotype they should attend some weekend workshop."

Mike replies: I disagree with you and could make a comprehensive response, but I don't have the time to write it out. In a (very tiny) nutshell, I went to art school, and my opinion is that any attempt to "teach people how to see" amounts, in practice, to an effort (however subtle) to inculcate them into an academic/doctrinaire acceptance of whatever is fashionable to or approved by the institution and the faculty of the institution and the prevailing aesthetic milieu in which the institution exists. I could write this argument in detail and with concrete examples going back at least to the Salon and the Royal Academy in the 19th century and the waves of avant-garde movements they eventually inspired...if I had a week and didn't have a job. My opinion is that what people eventually choose to do with their photography should be up to them, and that an ideal educational program would fit them with the means and skills to do their work and then stand back.

This might seem dull and uncool. But it's actually radical. Radically uncool, one might even say. :-)

As for gaining skills that prospectively will endure for a lifetime, what do you imagine my darkroom training was in 1982–5? It was necessary, accepted, and fully expected to endure into the foreseeable future....

Ilkka: "A 50mm is a good way to start but I wouldn't insist on Leica. Old Pentax or Nikon or Minolta would do just as well. After that, I would add one lens. And I would let the student decide whether s(he) wants to add wide, say 24/28mm or long, 85/90/100mm."

Mike replies: Fair enough, but in my opinion it has to be a Leica (provided by the school). There are technical reasons for this that I've elaborated in the past, but also status reasons. Students are touchy about their poverty, and about their self-image and identity, and there is nothing else in photography like the lore and legend of Leica; getting to grips with classic 20th-century photography and getting to know the "Leica mystique" up close and personal is a "feather in one's cap" that will tie a young newcomer to essential aspects of the medium's history, and make him or her feel special and feel proud in the process. And that's by design.

This is also part of the reason for using a medium-format digital camera in the third unit. It's partially for technical reasons, but also partly to allow students to experience the "best" at the time, or what's imagined to be the best, while they're being subsidized by their tuition. It's partly a matter of what Oren Grad calls "demystification," designed to partly free them from future GAS. —Sincerely, a formerly penniless art student who dressed in raggedy clothes and ate ramen noodles and very much didn't want to be stuck with any old crappy castoff eBay leftover.

Posted on Wednesday, 20 June 2018 at 11:10 AM in Open Mike | | Comments (34)

Wednesday, 23 May 2018

Open Mike: The Death of Newspapers (and of the Paper 'Shutterbug')

Politico magazine (online!) has a short-but-good article about the death of newspapers, using The Denver Post as a case in point. It's written from a sympathetic but realistic point of view.

The problem as I see it is not that old media is dying, but that the baby gets thrown out with the bathwater—in this case meaning that we lose the culture, ethical norms, and practical production methodologies of the content of the news...the structures that have been put in place over decades, even centuries, to insure a good semblance of impartiality, fairness, accuracy, and a bright-line separation between reporting and opinion. We also lose the hard-won structures of fair payment for honest work. The Internet might be more convenient, more easily tailored to suit, more on-demand, and cheaper, but there are few similar safeguards in place yet. All that we're losing—all that hard-won, well-evolved culture that goes along with the medium—we're going to have to learn all over again. Alas.

Life magazine coverThen again, corporatism had already gone a long way toward corrupting old media anyway, so maybe it's a wash. That's the fault of the failure of anti-trust legislation and laws.

Meanwhile, in our little corner of the firmament, Shutterbug magazine has announced that it will cease to publish a paper version. Fair enough—will anyone really shed a tear? The online version seems to be doing fine. It seems to be just a logical progression, not emblematic of anything. Just a sign of the times.

However, I've always regretted the fact that modern human beings give so much primacy so absolutely to capitalistic filters. With product categories, there are usually a few survivors that honor the best of the bygone past—consider for instance that you can still buy, brand new, a film Leica. That's as it should be, sez me...a throwback, yes, but it's a throwback that honors the best of the past.

But that's life
I've always had the idea that LIFE magazine should have been institutionalized somehow. Imagine a picture magazine that arrived into the households of every American every week, telling selected stories in still photographs of all aspects of American life, news, and culture. Yes, we can get a good analogue of the same thing online if we go looking for it. The difference is that a magazine freezes the images into final form, the editing plays a major part in shaping the stories, and—most importantly—having one such publication "set aside" in that way would provide shared common experience across the culture. That's what would have made it valuable...it could have been a shared context to provide a basis for discussion and understanding.

Janus

You can buy this new, which is cool.

I guess the only way such a thing could happen is if the government were to subsidize it, and that can't happen in the United States (although it does with NPR and public television). Certainly not now.

Hopefully, a few large English-speaking newspapers will make the transition to online versions, as seems to be happening. I subscibe to the essential New York Times (others choose The Wall Street Journal) and The Guardian.

The idea of a subsidized picture magazine is an impractical, impossible idea and I acknowledge and accept that. But that doesn't stop me from wishing it had somehow come to pass. Sometimes, culture provides triumphs—things that are valuable above and beyond their grubby, quotidian bottom lines. It's too bad that so many of those things have to be swept away simply because the business climate or the underlying technology, inevitably, changes.

Mike

"Open Mike" is the not always off-topic Editorial page of TOP. When the moon and the stars align, it appears on Wednesdays.

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Lee Rust: "When I went to journalism school in the early 1970s it was all about who-what-when-where-why, and how to be a responsible gatekeeper for the inner sanctum of public news and information. The operating principal was that a well-informed citizenry could make rational decisions if they were presented with a professionally moderated and curated data set.

"Underlying everything was the explicit assumption of a civic responsibility that was rigorously held separate from the base demands of commercial advertising profitability and subscriber revenue.

"If in fact that journalistic ideal was ever actually achieved in the romantically idealistic past, there is absolutely no doubt that it has been thoroughly discarded in this cruelly cynical Internet era.

"These days, all ad-based media function as some form of entertainment or another and the only rule is the rigid numbers game of eyeballs and ears. You get 'em and you're golden, you lose 'em and you're toast. It's that simple. For subscription-supported media the world is somewhat less harsh, but the steadily rising number of competitors continually dilutes the potential base of support for any one outlet.

"Holdout exceptions might be news outlets like The Washington Post or others that are owned and operated by exceedingly wealthy and/or obsessively dedicated individuals or organizations...but these are by definition a dwindling minority. [See also John Camp's comment on this point, in the Comments section. —Ed.]

"Meanwhile the cost of production is ever increasing, especially if physical materials like paper have to be processed and distributed. We will say goodbye to the physical editions of just about everything, especially for specialized audiences like Shutterbug, and hard-copy periodicals will be strictly luxury items.

"Now, the virtual gatekeepers are Facebook, YouTube, Google and all their derivatives and imitators. The robot algorithm that generates the Google News page is driven strictly by what people actually choose, rather than by what they might need.

"Barring the failure of the technological infrastructure due to calamity or catabolic collapse, we are living in a new normal and will each have to make a special place for ourselves within it. That's why some of us are here in front of our personal devices reading theonlinephotographer.com instead of shutterbug.com."

JohnMFlores: "About that cool Janus motorcycle...I considered riding one cross country in 2016 because the style evoked an earlier era. But as you know, I ended up following George A. Wyman's trip with the electric Zero instead. On Memorial Day, Richard Worsham, a co-founder of Janus Motorcycles, will begin his own trip across the country from San Francisco to New York City astride one of his own. Read more here."

Posted on Wednesday, 23 May 2018 at 11:32 AM in News and Occasions, Open Mike | | Comments (34)

Thursday, 19 April 2018

Open Mike: Poetry and Heart (and a Bit of Gray Fog)

["Open Mike" is the Editorial Page of TOP, wherein we occasionally vent spleen.]

-

This is a bit dyspeptic, so approach with caution.

Sometimes, I get the curious feeling that I miss photography. A few jokers in the crowd will quip that that's because I never write about it any more, but I'm being serious.

It's not something that I can quite put my finger on. And, of course, photography is a chameleon and its world is a kaleidoscope—there's no "photography," as Roland Barthes pointed out when he mentioned that none of us has ever seen more than a tiny subset of the set "all photographs." So maybe I'm not saying "photography has changed and I miss it," but "the things I personally used to get out of the kinds of photography used to like the best are getting a little harder for me to find." That's more finicky, but usefully less global.

The private term that I've long used for what I look for in photography is "poetry." This is indefensible as a critical principle, but, as I say, it's private, personal, and I know what I mean by it. In writing my book chapters upstairs the private name I use for the same thing is "heart." To satisfy me, every chapter has to have an emotional core. It has to touch somehow on deeper feeling. Writing without heart doesn't reward me with what I want it to be, what I want from it, what I find soul-nourishing in it.

Of course I know that very little writing even aims to have heart.

Funky Butters-small

...Remember when pics could be funky, not perfect?

"Missing" photography might have something to do with getting older...passion, vitality, and urgency ebbs, stealing away unnoticed in the night. The biggest change is...well, let me put it this way. Let's say the number one dream of your life is or was to be a great sports star, a famous and fabled baseball, football (or, for you Europeans and South Americans, football), or basketball player. At age 11, no matter who you are, you are allowed hope; maybe it could happen. But by age 45, if it hasn't happened, it very likely ain't gonna. The dream is the same as ever, but your age gives you radically different perspectives on it. That's what advancing age does to ambitions and the determination and fervor that goes with them. Those ships have sailed, you might say. At my age it's pretty clear I'm never going to be a great photographer, included in all the future history books. So I guess I could guess that one thing I miss is the sense of mission and possibility and potential of youth. Even if whatever dreams you had were always long shots, always unlikely, still, they're permitted to the young, denied to the old. That's all.

And there are a lot of things I miss about the photography I grew up with. The primacy of black-and-white. The inherent necessity for prints and printmaking. The difficulty of it, or the nature of the difficulty of it (because digital is difficult too, just differently). The direct chain of connection to artists and practitioners of bygone eras, who used essentially similar techniques and faced essentially similar problems, and that feeling of camaraderie with them. Those were my brothers and sisters, you know? Now most photographers just can't see how they're relevant. And maybe they're not.

One thing I miss is what was touched on by Carl Weese in his post the other day: the bygone sense that mastery was progressive and additive and that once you knew something, you knew it. Now, mastery is temporary and provisional and needs constant updating. Ralph Gibson probably still prints on the ancient Leitz enlarger he bought from Robert Frank. But n people say you can't compare the A7III to the D750 because the D750 is four years old and it's a whole new era now. It doesn't matter how well I mastered the HP B9180 printer or Photoshop 5 or the various sharpening protocols for 3-megapixel camera files: none of that matters any more. Master something now, and the ground will soon shift underneath you. Some people love this (because they get to master new things!), and it's possible it just appeals to people with different skillsets and mind-sets, and isn't either bad or good. And maybe it's just the nature of the business I'm in. But it seems like the tech stuff is harder to get past and put aside these days than it used to be. Or does anyone ever truly get past it any more, and just concentrate on pictures and what they show?

Most of all, though, what I miss is the poetry behind reality that photography seemed to access so effortlessly, and the sense of heart that I felt I could detect in the work of various artists. Oh, please don't take this as some sort of grand indictment or sweeping pronouncement—it's just a matter of degree is all. Sure, there's still poetry and heart out there. It's just become a little harder to find, is all, a little more fugitive—just as the "signatures" of weird old poorly-coated lenses were hard to miss and the highly perfected lenses of today seem pitilessly perfect, analytical, clinical, and difficult to differentiate from each other in pictures. You know what I mean? 

If you want to think I'm just getting old and creaky, that's okay. I don't mind. Might be you're right. Could be I'm just getting a little out of focus, losing the obsessiveness or passion (whichever you prefer to call it) that I used to enjoy or suffer from (again, take your pick). But I feel kinda in need of renewal. Spring better get here quick! It's snowing again today, and yeah, I know I'm supposed to be patient, and yeah, I know I should practice acceptance, but I'm just frustrated as hell with the weather. Makes me want to scream. I need daffodils, bunnies, robins and spring-green buds on the branches of the trees, g'dangit! Get this gray fog off me!

Sheesh.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Paul Richardson: "Amen to everything you said. Even the weather part."

Paul: "I don't think it's an age problem because I'm 45 and I'm also missing the poetry in most photography. Digital is just too good.

"It's funny but your post has felt personally quite poignant as I've just received Sally Mann's new book A Thousand Crossings. You just can't get much more poetic in photography than Sally. Digital is just too damn realistic; it doesn't tell it slant."

BERND REINHARDT: "I'm pretty sure that Ralph Gibson uses a Leica M Monochrom these days, so he has managed to learn a new medium. His mastery is his seeing and that hasn't changed."

[In the "different strokes for different folks" department, read these next two together— Ed.]

David Saxe: "Could not agree more Michael. I think the Internet has taken over. These days all one has to do is post your pictures on Facebook and voila!—you are a photographer. I notice that a lot of what I see on Facebook or Instagram lacks heart and passion. They are just pictures. Most of them are JPEGs posted straight out of the camera. There is not the slightest sign from the photographer that there was any other effort made to convert the image into a photograph. No burning, dodging, nada. They are just straight images. They are simply saying 'This is what I saw.' I doubt most of these guys even print their images. I have been making photographs for over 45 years. Not one of my images was ever straight printed from a negative or JPEG. Once you start working on an image, it becomes something else, something you own. I think that part is missing in photography today. Its simply too generic."

Rob L.: "I found that I started loving photography more again when I started shooting JPEG only and accepting what I got. The required ongoing technical prowess to stay current is fun, until it isn't—and having shipped off my Nikkors and D750...not because they weren't good, but because I simply couldn't talk to them effectively. Silly Fuji's with their dials and wheels and 'make it pretty' preset JPEGs are a balm when I just want to record my world. But you've also been through a lot—hopefully spring, whenever it may show it's leafy head—comes, you'll see a shot and have a sense of the wonder."

Earl Dunbar: "In Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, it's named 'quality.' We all need it; finding or achieving it is the journey regardless of how early or late."

Posted on Thursday, 19 April 2018 at 03:53 PM in Open Mike | | Comments (75)

Sunday, 15 April 2018

Open Mike: Musical Tastes

["Open Mike" (no karaoke) is the often off-topic, anything-goes Editorial page of TOP. It appears on...ohthehellwithit, it appears whenever it appears, I give up. —MJ]

Most of this has surfaced on TOP before, here and there, but repetition never hurts and what's more, repetition never hurts.

Musical tastes...everyone's is different. I was mainly into later '50s jazz for about 10–12 years. Now I’m back to listening to some pop and rock for the emotion, but my tastes are eclectic. I listen to a fair amount of classical but my tastes in that area are pretty circumscribed, basically instrumental music from the Baroque to the late Classical period, favoring smaller-scale over larger. I went through several years in the '80s obsessed with Bach. Almost addicted: if I didn't get a Bach fix every three or four days I started jonesing. Favorite: BWV 1052, which Robert Schumann considered among the greatest of masterpieces. A window to the heavens of great God.

I have a turntable in the family room with a few hundred old albums, including the first one I ever got when I was seven years old, “Something New” by the Beatles, a USA-only packaging, bought new in the Summer of '64. Although I grew up with it I don't really like rock that much, and I don't care much any more for blues, other than roots blues, although I used to. By far my favorite period of rock is '90s grunge. About three times better than the '60s if you ask me, although the '60s were also pretty good.

I have about 14,000 music files* but overall they don’t really reflect my tastes…more my explorations.

It takes an awful lot for a whole record to break through into “favorite” status and it doesn’t happen very often. Some favorite albums that I b'lieve are all from the 2000s:

Post War by M. Ward

Small Town Heroes by Hurray for the Riff-Raff

'Sno Angel Like You by Howe Gelb (of Giant Sand—he hired a gospel choir for the project, and the result is zany but completely enjoyable, to me anyway). Howe Gelb is an isolated and neglected genius.

Continuo by Avishai Cohen (jazz)

The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas by the brilliant Courtney Barnett, a young Australian singer-songwriter. In her natural state she sounds like she's high.

You Had It Coming by Jeff Beck. Soundtrack to my life during an important year. Strange it didn't damage my hearing, except maybe it did. After my GF bailed on me, I was afraid to listen to this again for a long time, but when I finally did it wasn't too bad.

That's enough of that. Nobody works in albums any more.

I listen to a fair amount of pop too but it's like gum, sweet at first chew but pretty soon you want to spit it out. Songs with words are problematic if you ask me, because it adds a whole 'nuther layer the artists have to get right. A lot of musicians suck at lyrics. There's a legend that Paul McCartney's original lyrics for "Yesterday" started with "scrambled eggs," but John and George Martin jumped all over him, insisting the melody was way too good for stupid lyrics. (This is why some people do better work in bands.) Another example: "Seaweed" by the Fruit Bats. Gorgeous melody, instrumentally perfect (the intro of the banjo at 1:23 breaks your heart, just lovely), but the lyrics are so go**amned horribly shi**y it makes me want to wring Eric Johnson's neck every time I hear it. A potentially brilliant gem of a song ruined. If I were rich I'd pay him a lot of money to write new lyrics for it, and I'd hire a guy to stand there next to him and hit him with a stick every time he started drifting off into stupid. (I blame Weezer and "the Sweater Song," which kicked off a brief fad for willfully stupid, trivial lyrics**, as if it were cool...fortunately pretty soon people realized it was just stupid rather than stupid-as-cool.) Lyrics are like color in photographs: a whole extra layer that has to be right or ruination results. /rant

A few recent-ish favorite songs or cuts:

  • "Fade Out Lines" by The Avener, a deep house rework of "The Fade Out Line" by Phoebe Killdeer and The Short Straws that was a hit in Europe. (But, again, if you're tempted to listen too hard to the lyrics, best not to.)

Lorine chiaLorine Chia

  • "Eve's Perspective" by Lorine Chia. This might be a lesbian anthem for all I know, although I don't know anything about Lorine. But I've been listening to a fair amount of hip-hop and rap recently and I'm naturally drawn to the slowdrag melodic stuff such as Geto Boys' "Six Feet Deep" which rechannels Marvin Gaye. I'm over this now ("Eve's Perspective," I mean) but the cut had legs for a whole year for me.
  • "Destiny" by Henry Binns and Sam Hardaker (Zero 7). Bobby Burnett turned me on to this, and it alone is enough reason for all the people who made it to have been born.

  • "Turiya and Ramakrishna" by Alice Coltrane (jazz)
  • "Arriving Somewhere But Not Here" by Porcupine Tree. A long, dramatic, almost operatic cut, in the style of high-period Pink Floyd. A good example of the importance of primacy in art: if this had come out in the '70s it would have been as famous as Tubular Bells. But despite being completely amazing no one's ever heard of it, or heard it.
  • "Gabriel's Mother's Hiway Ballad #16 Blues" by Arlo Guthrie. A stone folk classic, but I just discovered it last year, waiting in the line at the car wash. Whatever's old is new the first time you hear it.

My two favorite musicians, in any genre, are Coleman Hawkins and Hank Jones. (Both have huge discographies. To sample, try the Hawk's Here and Now, an Impulse disc from '62 which has both "Quintessence" and "Apache Love Song." If you have Amazon Prime you can stream it for free on Amazon; otherwise better get it on iTunes, as it's pretty thoroughly out of print. For Hank, try any Great Jazz Trio record or one of my faves, "Bluesette." I love Mr. Hank, he is a paragon of taste and modesty and chops that never stop. R.I.P.

Finally, a few amazing videos everybody should see:

  • Tash Sultana, "Jungle," (bedroom recording). New discovery to me, compliments of a woman I don't know named Isabella.
  • Marquese Scott used a spell of homelessness, living on the street, to work on his urban dancing, and this vid earned him an apartment and a BMW. Or so I heard, and I like the story so I'm not fact-checking it. The music is a Dubstep version of the controversial "Pumped Up Kicks" by Foster the People from 2010.
  • Imogen Heap's virtuoso one-woman "Just for Now" is a must-view.
  • Ibeyi's "The River" is simple but stunning, very creative, and I love the song.
  • If you're into dance compilations, there's a great one of Christopher Walken (who dances in just about every movie he does), and a film preservationist did a mashup of dance clips from old movies set to "Uptown Funk" that's pretty wonderful
  • Finally, compare this one and this one. Threads, it's all threads.

Obviously this conversation could continue. Music is a consumable as far as I'm concerned. I need fresh, and it's a constant exploration, a constant search. It's possible for someone to love music and not like a single thing I've mentioned in this post. An ocean, fortunately, and you can't drink up it all. Suits me.

Mike
(Thanks to M.D.)

* I'm sorry, but nothing by Leonard Nimoy.

** The prototype is Jimmy Webb's "MacArthur Park" from 1968—even Webb himself was put off by its bloated, bombastic, over-the-top arrangement violently yoked to dopey, meaningless lyrics. Wikipedia tells us that comedian Dave Barry nominated it as the worst song ever written. Listen to the original Richard Harris version for the full-on treacle of the arrangement. One hopes its great popularity had mostly to do with audiences' appreciation of its campiness....

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Wolfgang Lonien: "What a coincidence that you bring up music. I used to be a bass player when I was young (almost like in another life), but lately—short before my 61st—I've begun online jamming again—and 'published' an album. Listen to it here if you like. And honest critique is welcome, tho please keep in mind that this is a) only some jammin', and b) I'm missing some 35 years of practice, so I'm like a bl**dy beginner...."

Mike replies: I wonder if I have the right page...it sounds very accomplished to me, not much like jamming. Good on you for getting back to it and getting yourself out there in any case! I'm always impressed by that. I hope my novel will be like that.

Ken: "Your tastes in music, cameras and photography are seemingly (mostly) the opposite of mine. Maybe, for me, that's one part of what makes TOP interesting to read. Better that than an echo chamber."

Mike replies: Yes, that's why it's so important for reviewers to be honest and open about their tastes and prejudices. That way, readers can learn from them even if they don't agree with them.

Speed: "Re: Scrambled eggs. Keen to not forget his magical dream melody, McCartney wrote some temporary lyrics for the song—about scrambled eggs, and named it after the breakfast dish. They went: 'Scrambled eggs, oh, my baby, how I love your legs.' Scrambled Eggs became a running joke between the band for 'months and months' ... 'We almost had it finished when we made up our minds that only a one word title would suit and, believe me, we just couldn’t find the right one. Then, one morning, Paul woke up, and the song and the title were both there. Completed!' See the article here."

Posted on Sunday, 15 April 2018 at 01:25 PM in Music Notes, Off-topic posts, Open Mike | | Comments (31)

Wednesday, 14 March 2018

Top Ten Rolling Stones Songs

I know, it's been "all photography all the time" here at TOP lately. But this is "Open Mike" day, and this is easy to type.

  1. Gimme Shelter
  2. Sympathy for the Devil
  3. Midnight Rambler (live version)
  4. Tumbling Dice
  5. Satisfaction
  6. Monkey Man
  7. Harlem Shuffle*
  8. Wild Horses
  9. Shattered
  10. Can't You Hear Me Knockin'

Simple; obvious. No one can have any arguments with that.  :-)

Mike

*NY mix, from Rarities

P.S. This will be the last off-topic post for the rest of the year, I promise. Except for maybe one or two.

Original contents copyright 2018 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

MarkB: "0. Paint It Black."

hugh crawford: "No Paint It Black?"

Jim Metzger: "Can we give Paint it Black Miss Congeniality?"

Dave Levingston: "Strange...my list has Paint It Black at the top...."

Josh Hawkins: "Paint it black. It's not just the best Rolling Stones song, it may one of the top 10 rock and roll songs period."

Romano: "¿Angie?"

Michel: "When you take a typing break I suggest listening to this bit from Tig Notaro—the first three minutes or so of the clip."

Mike replies: I've heard this in the car on Sirius XM. It's a wonderful little bit. Love it. Thanks for the link.

Andrew Lamb: "'You Can't Always Get What You Want' would be on my top ten. About ten years ago, I had to photograph L'wren Scott's fashion collection in New York. She was doing small presentations in a suite at the Pierre. It was just the fashion writer, L'wren Scott, a model, and yours truly. It was odd to see Mick Jagger bound into the room, wearing just a pair of boxers. I diplomatically lowered my camera. Needless to say, he knew the fashion writer and chatted amiably about the recent fashion shows. It was an odd way to meet him."

Jim A.: "It makes sense for you to be in music mode. Hang in there. I recently bought my first turntable (Denon) since high school (1970s) and have been rediscovering beloved songs from my youth. I've lugged my old album collection from closet to closet for years now and it's a pleasure to finally here some forgotten gems. I'm also exploring the catalog of these older bands so this post was perfect timing for me.

"Back in the day, I did not buy Beatles and Stones albums. They were just too wildly popular and got way too much air play. Every time I turned on the radio in my rusty 1968 Mustang Grande (with malfunctioning gas gauge and mighty Thriftpower I-6) I heard their music. Now I have plenty of great old Beatles and Stones stuff to explore, and the comments are helping! Commercial for Mustang Grande—1968 (Flamenco music...'color this one cool').

"Here are a couple of 'gems' I've unearthed that have a reggae groove. Enjoy while you rest that arm. Frank Zappa—Lucille has Messed My Mind Up—1979 (vocals: Ike Willis); David Bowie—Don't Look Down—1984."

Michael Ferron: "Gimmie Shelter right at the top where it belongs. Good job. But Mike where is Paint It Black?? Shakes head. (kidding)."

Ari: "'Not Fade Away' should make the list purely by virtue of having supplied the title of Jim Marshall’s wonderful book—of photographs."

Posted on Wednesday, 14 March 2018 at 03:40 PM in Music Notes, Off-topic posts, Open Mike | | Comments (68)

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