You’ve seen all of the fire photos. This one is from my friend Mr. Wolf. “Now we’re wearing masks to filter out the ash. Everything looks like it has a very light dusting of snow. Our AQI fluctuates between 80 and 250. 250 is world class bad, like Mumbai etc. But because it’s all fairly heavy particulate just staying indoors with everything closed up is very effective.
Author Archives: Steve Mays
Music documentaries
- Country Music (Ken Burns)
- Sound City Studios
- Twenty Feet from Stardom
- Mavis!
- Muscle Shoals
- Laurel Canyon
I was going to give these their own tag but a list seemed like a better approach for so few.
Meetings that should always be Zoomed
Every year about this time our homeowners association has a picnic/business meeting. Rotates from home to home each year. The picnic is okay for meeting any newcomers (rare) but the business meeting is what you’d expect. Mostly a few people (same every year) bitching about the roads or or the dues we pay to maintain them. Eventually we get around to electing new officers (getting more difficult every year.
Thanks to the pandemic, this years meeting will be via Zoom and (mercifully) limited to 40 minutes. Plenty of time to do what needs to be done. People can email their complaints before the meeting so we can have an agenda from the git-go.
When online video was hard
Everywhere you look people are streaming live video. TV news programs, late night talk shows, online classes, grandmothers Zooming with their grandkids. It has never been easier to “video chat” with someone. But it wasn’t always this way. Here are a few of my memories from the early days. (6 min)
Turbo Encabulator
YouTube notes: “This is the first time Turbo Encabulator was recorded with picture. I shot this in the late 70’s at Regan Studios in Detroit on 16mm film. The narrator and writer is Bud Haggert. He was the top voice-over talent on technical films. He wrote the script because he rarely understood the technical copy he was asked to read and felt he shouldn’t be alone. We had just finished a production for GMC Trucks and Bud asked since this was the perfect setting could we film his Turbo Encabulator script. He was using an audio prompter referred to as “the ear”. He was actually the pioneer of the ear. He was to deliver a live speech without a prompter. After struggling in his hotel room trying to commit to memory he went to plan B. He recorded it to a large Wollensak reel to reel recorder and placed it in the bottom of the podium. With a wired earplug he used it for the speech and the “ear” was invented. Today every on-camera spokesperson uses a variation of Bud’s innovation. Dave Rondot (me) was the director and John Choate was the DP on this production. The first laugh at the end is mine. My hat’s off to Bud a true talent.”
Cardio isn’t enough
A couple of years ago I added some resistance training to my workout (30 minutes a day on the treadmill). Started with little (5 pound) barbells working mostly on my upper body. Just trying to keep some muscle tone as I age. After a while I moved up to 10 pound weights and that seems about right. I had no idea if the weights were doing me any good but a piece in The Washington Post argues that cardio isn’t enough, you need resistance training, too.
The piece sites a couple of studies including research that shows weight training reduces your risk of diabetes, stroke ad heart disease. Similarly, “a 2019 study, which included nearly 13,000 people, performing resistance training for less than an hour per week was associated with roughly 40 to 70 percent decreased risk of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality — independent of any aerobic exercise.” The article explains how resistance training yields these benefits.
So I’ll keep my little weight bench and my baby barbells and keep pumping till I can’t pump no more.
Liquid Life
New filters for iMovie
I’ve played with filters over the years but gather they’ve become far more popular in a social media world.
Wildlife: From the kitchen window
Barb took this shot from the kitchen window. Seems like all of the critters are coming closer to the house these days. Hattie and Riley go nuts until Barb lets them out. The deer bound away but not in a panic. We think they know where the “invisible fence” line is and the dogs don’t go beyond.
Day-tight Compartment
Journalist and novelist Molly Jong-Fast calls herself “a pandemic-shutdown champion.”
I sit in my apartment day after day, week after week, focused on getting through the next few hours and not allowing myself to worry too much about, or even think too much about, the future. For this superpower, I have to thank Alcoholics Anonymous.
An older fellow in one of her AA meetings used to say he lived “in a day-tight compartment.” He only concerned himself with the activities in the current 24 hours. Back in March the author had to quarantine for two weeks but didn’t think of it as two weeks:
I thought of it as one day and then another day and another. The two weeks passed, but the pandemic did not. So I continued to live “in a day-tight compartment.” I still do. Every night at 8 p.m., I attend my Zoom AA meeting. Every morning, I think, Today I won’t drink and Today I’ll stay home and not contract the coronavirus.
Ms. Jong-Fast says she’s as obsessed with getting back to normal as everyone else is…
“…but I try not to worry about when that will be possible. I’ll lose it if I think in terms of hanging on until there’s a vaccine. Some people may find it helpful to tell themselves, It’s not forever. It’s just a few months. In my experience, though, when there’s no firm deadline for the end of an ordeal—and no one really knows when the pandemic will end—it’s better to focus on getting through the day. Life isn’t lived two weeks from now, or two months from now. Life exists in the moment and nowhere else.”
She knows this winter will be “one of the hardest, saddest winters of (her) lifetime. We all know it.”
“But it’s not winter 2020; we don’t live in winter 2020 until we do. All any of us have is right now. The only time we can possibly occupy is this moment of this day, and today I can drink my coffee, not my vodka, try to get my teenagers to talk to me, and do the next right thing.”