“Never publish after a couple of glasses of wine. Wait for the better judgment of morning” says the spouse. D’accord…
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From the monthly archives:
September 2009
Errands, chores, 4 InMenlo assignments – I barely had time to research DAM systems for the new, soon-to-be much improved Gulker Photo Archive (and we did learn a lot from an O’Reilly title on the topic). Indeed, today’s InMenlo posts went through an entirely new workflow, and we managed to add useful information to about a thousand photos made this past May in Ameugny.
Mais oui, we are feeling a bit exhausted after today’s travails, but happy, too, to have the stamina, again, to face days like this. Tomorrow is already fully-booked with an MRI, neuro-oncology consult (Dr. Susan Chang) and chemo, but Thursday and Friday loom, unbooked as I write. Memo to admins, hold all calls and email…
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Black stars, judging from an article in this month’s Scientific American, are all the buzz in theoretical astrophysical circles of late. Here, at gulker.com, the buzz has more to do with a bad haircut we once had (and, trust me, that wasn’t even close to the worst haircut(s) I ever had).
But, we continue to be inspired to take photographs, against the best judgment of time, which holds that those who show a little talent in their youth, show much less in their sunset years. Nevertheless we took the photo you see here, inspired, no doubt, by a photo we saw on Facebook, shot by a younger and much better photog, Texas-based Greg Kendall-Ball, whom we met at the Southwest Photojournalists Conference last year. Yeah, OK, so it’s the burner on my stove… we don’t get out much, and we’re trying…
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So, our new Rector greeted me at the door as we left church this morning, and offered this insight: “Chris, I’ve been trying to think of what that photo of you reminded me of and it just came to me – you look like the Unabomber!” Um, thank you Father Matthew. Others have suggested that, with a tunic and some headgear, I might look like someone from a very different faith tradition…
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So, yesterday’s post of a young, ’scary’ moi produced a number of comments, here, and on Facebook et al. All I can say is, was I the only one among us who had a bad haircut 30 years ago?
I noted that the photo of me came from a box in the garage including some pix of a young Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band, playing the Whiskey A Go Go on LA’s Sunset Strip. As I recall, a CBS Records flack hired me to shoot the gig, probably because, about a year earlier, I’d photographed Bruce and the band at Berkeley High School (hey, even Bruce had to start humble), one of which photos wound up in Rolling Stone somehow.
Like a lot of startup bands, Bruce & Co. had signed contracts that obligated them to play a number of dates at venues that gave them an early break, so tickets for this then red-hot act at a tiny club like the Whiskey became a very big deal in rising-celeb-crazed LA. Bruce, as you can see, had a much better haircut… but Linda has confirmed that she never fell in love with him…
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Or so says spouse Linda, calling this a ’scary photo,’ which dates from 1980 I think. I came across it while scanning in some old photos at the garage operation this afternoon.
The photo was in the same box with pictures of a young Bruce Springsteen performing at the Whiskey A Go Go, and a newspaper clip featuring my photo of Richard Avedon.
Funny that Linda thinks I was scary in the beard. When I cut the beard some years later, she wasn’t sure she liked what she saw then, either. Now I’m not allowed to even discuss growing it back…
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As mentioned previously, we managed to do in our 40-year-old Mixmaster after making communion bread for these past four Sundays or so. The machine’s thin, brittle, ungrounded electrical cord and metal chassis were, to say the least, not inspiring confidence as we worked nearby, hands wet, but the steadily worsening odor of burning motor coils made us feel it wise to move on sooner, rather than later.
So, we pinged our baking partner-in-crime, the Rev. Beth Foote, and asked if we could be the bread provider this Sunday, the better to try out the new rig sooner than later. Beth, who, like most parish priests, has no lack of work to do, was grateful for the respite. Moi, I was happy to have an excuse to fire up this marvel of French culinary engineering.
And indeed, it was night and day: the Cuisinart both mixes the dough and kneads it, meaning I just add ingredients, mix and then cover the mixing-bowl with a warm, wet cloth – no onerous (one-) hand kneading necessary before returning in a couple hours for the risen dough. I punched out the small, round loaves, cut a cross in the top of each, and popped them in the oven for 15 minutes. Heh, our latest career move: from unpaid blogger to volunteer baker… I think mom would be proud…
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A couple days ago, I bought a 28 dollar ‘light bulb’ at Fry’s. This bulb is actually a high-intensity LED mounted in a reflector that will install in the halogen-light fixtures in our house…. we have something like 20 of these units.
The halogen bulbs use 20 or 30 watts of power, and provide a lot of warm-colored light for the money, vs. old-school incandescent light bulbs. A 20-watt ‘can’ replaces a 60- or 100-watt incandescent lamp, and provides better light (although you have to build these things into your ceilings).
The LED uses 1 watt of power, and throws no less light than the halogens. Our only issue is that my new LED sits in a bank of 3, and its light is noticeably bluer and more focused. The Fry’s packaging had confusing markings for flood, spot, warm and cool light, so we wound up with cool spot (actually, the only choice), where warm flood would have been most appropriate. However, the concept is proved – 1 watt LEDs are the equal of 20-watt halogens in light-throwing ability. Indeed, we now have a cool, blue torch illuminating the World HQ.
I felt this way when I discovered compact fluorescents some years ago. I went through the house, replacing all but one lamp, trading 60- and 100-watt bulbs with 8- and 12- watt units. The new CFL bulbs cost $5 vs. 69 cents for old-school fluorescents, but the payback was short, and, anyway, it was the right thing to do.
I’ve now discovered warm flood LEDs online for $13 cheaper than Fry’s. I think it’s time to make the switch. Next up, swap out the garage refrigerator for a more energy efficient model…
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It has been a long, indeed, a very long day for moi. We rose at 6 to head out on our walk, sadly missing Scott (in NYC with Obama) and Tiger Lily, the official gulker.com (proxy) dog of record, my normal Tuesday walking companions.
Next, we hit the home gym for Heidi exercise, including the ‘humility’ floor exercises. Ooof.
After shower, it was 1-800 time. My life typically involves repeated, literal days on hold with any number of insurance companies, plan administrators and state and federal government agencies. The good news is we have 2 phone lines, both equipped with speaker phones, and it’s a great aid – it’s rare that both lines produce a live operator at the same time.
Once, when such a singular concurrence occurred, it happened there was a they-said, you-said conflict and I was able to solve the problem by pushing the two phones close enough that each agency’s operator could hear the other saying ‘it’s the other party’s problem.’. Their usual excuses evaporated, and the people seemed intimidated, when faced with a peer from their previously anonymous scapegoat agency, and a particularly intractable (up to that point) problem was solved quickly.
But, I digress. I had initiated a Social Security Administration call shortly after 10, which was close to resolution at 10:45, but I had a 11:00 shrink appointment. Fortunately, shrink does email, and I alerted him before concluding SSA and heading out.
Head shrunk, I walked across the parking lot to Amici’s for my first InMenlo assignment of the day, a charity lunch event featuring a bunch of local sports talk-radio guys waiting table in a pizza parlor. The pictures were better than I expected, and it was all for a good cause.
Next came dentist appointment – this time a broken tooth, requiring a crown. Ugh, even though dentist Lana Sundahl got us in and out as fast as one could imagine. Home again, we delved back into SSA/insurance issues (our COBRA is about to lapse), before spouse got home and promptly dragged me off to another InMenlo assignment. She did allow that it was OK to eat out tonight… I’m bushed… sun has been down for a long time…
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We have been amused, lately, by distractions like the rumor of the ‘Super-heavy Suburban.’ Another fun diversion has been learning how to bake communion bread. When our 40-year-old mixer all but died in the middle of the last batch, we had to research – extensively – and, ultimately, purchase a new machine (we chose the Cuisinart, on closeout at Fry’s).
But, it’s true that an undercurrent in my life this past summer has been the dip in my strength and mobility, caused by edema, or brain swelling related to my brain tumor. I was slow to come to grips with the decline, and resisted going back on chemo, which, in retrospect, wasn’t wise. Two infusions into chemo, and a lot of my recently-lost left side has come back. I’m tying my shoes again, getting bowls down from a high shelf again and otherwise getting back to the body I’d reclaimed from the near-complete trainwreck of two years ago.
As we were nosediving this past summer, there was no way of knowing if this was not the beginning of the end. Half of stage-3 glioma patients at UCSF live for 4 years, according to the published data when I was diagnosed, but statisticians will tell you that statistics are near-meaningless from the standpoint of the individual. The average American male is 5-feet, 10-inches tall. But, if you’re Shaq, or anyone else for that matter, the statistic is meaningless – you are what you are.
Which is to say, the statistic is not an insurance policy that I’d make that cut (and I’m still some 18 months from being there) and, given my luck (one is far more likely to be struck by lightning than contract glioma) I won’t be the one in two who gets there. Nevertheless, I’ve kind of made that my horizon and planned my life around it.
This summer’s crash has made me realize that, ultimately, I’m not in control of this thing. It will do what it’s going to do, and I’m just along for the ride. I can work at rehab, and make what I’m given as good as it can be, but that’s all I can do (and count on me doing that much).
But, the scare has crystalized my thoughts on the topic of what I want to be doing when events overtake me. So we have been making an inventory of important things, hence the black ops center, which enterprise mainly is focused on discovering, and archiving, those small contributions I have made to my era. We’re also thinking about days to come, and where we want to spend those days…
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