My Brilliant Mistakes

Take a deep breath, originally uploaded by cynthiacloskey.

My father turns 70 today. In our family, that means pyrotechnics.

We traditionally get our birthday cakes from Robert’s Bakery, in downtown Butler. My brother loaded up the cake with 70 candles, and Dad managed to get them all extinguished before the cake caught fire.

The icing did melt a bit though.

Happy birthday, Dad!

I’ve fallen off the Twitter bandwagon. At first I stopped twittering in righteous indignation at the amount of time that the site goes down, or shuts down services because it’s overloaded. If I’m using something to stay in touch with people, I want it to work reliably. Otherwise, what’s the point?

I have an account on Pownce, and I thought I might use that as my Twitter alternative: a place to post short things that aren’t quite ready-for-blog-time, and to see what my friends are up to. It’s fine for that, except there’s not a critical mass of my curent friends there. Using Pownce felt like being the first one at a party, standing around holding a drink and waiting for everyone else to show up — and feeling sure that everyone has decided to go instead to another party across town (or stay at the party (Twitter) that they were already at).

So I didn’t use anything for a while. This turned out to be a lonely but brilliant idea. Lonely, because I was disconnected from the on-going conversations that everyone is continuing to have, doing perfectly fine without my interjections. Brilliant, because not being part of these conversations freed up oodles of time during the work day, time that I used to get real, paying work done.

And it turned out that, while those missed conversations were fun, I was still able to keep in enough touch with people to maintain friendships and feel sufficiently connected.

Still and all, I missed having an outlet for small observations, and I wished for a way to keep a little bit in the loop. I tried just dipping into Twitter and jumping back out, but the glitches and outages still seem to be going on. And the conversations are addictive; I don’t think my willpower is strong enough for small sips at the firehose.

I noticed a few people talking about Plurk. Yet another social networking site? Yes. I like its interface, especially how easy it is to see a thread of conversations (a big problem in Twitter). Plurk also doesn’t promise to be instantaneous, so it feels different from Twitter and instant messaging. The odd cartoony graphics are intriguing.

I’m especially interested in how they’ve integrated a concept of karma. The more you do with Plurk, the more karma you build; you ca also lose karma in various ways. The more karma you have, the more features you have access to. This matches one of the important principles for building a good social network (one which I first heard about from Brad King): No free rides. If you want to play, you have to contribute.

(Now that I think about it, Plurk karma is kind of like one of the rules of Fight Club: If this is your first time at Fight Club, you have to fight. Interesting.)

Anyway, one big way to build Plurk karma is to invite others to join. So…

Accept my invitation to Plurk!

This looks interesting:
A Transom Special Feature with Art Outlet’s SELF Program & FLIK International Movie Festival What is SELF?

SELF is a forum created by Art Outlet where artists explore self-portraiture in traditional and non-traditional media. It can be a memory, a vignette from life, an interesting dream that affected you, an experience of moving to a new culture, a story your mother once told you, an event that changed your notion of identity, a meditation on a certain theme in your life…

Transom, in association with Art Outlet and the FLIK International Movie Festival, is seeking multi-media self-portraits to be featured at the festival and on the site. We’ll offer honoraria to those we put on Transom. All stories must be non-fiction, under five minutes, and include both audio and visual components. The visual can literally reflect the story, or complement it – your choice. Along with your soundtrack, you can use photo slideshows, cut up old films and videos, animation, footage of locations or related imagery, or even a series of hand drawings. Whatever works for the story. (By the way, Transom is pleased to be working on this project with our original Web Director, Josh Barlow).

The video embedded above is a submission for the project, from Renee Shaw. It’s titled “My Best Friend Mark.”

Special announcement, with a deal for Pittsburgh-area bloggers:

Area bloggers are invited free of charge to Quantum Theatre’s performance of Shakepeare’s Cymbeline:

Preview Performance (they will be testing the techie workings of the production)
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Mellon Park (Point Breeze/Shadyside neighborhood)
8PM (no late seating, gates lock at 8 sharp)

Quantum Theatre’s upcoming production is Shakespeare’s Cymbeline, which runs in Mellon Park from July 31-Aug 24. It is truly innovative in that Karla Boos — the director and Quantum founder — is collaborating with Illah Nourbakhsh at the Robotics Institute at CMU to integrate interactive technology into the production.

We can’t spill any more secrets than that, except to say that this event is sure to be a wonder.

Find out about Quantum Theatre at their website: www.quantumtheatre.com.

RSVP required; cancellations appreciated. Please RSVP to Rene Conrad at rconrad@quantumtheatre.com or 412.697.2929.

Crusty Rusty Bolts originally uploaded by mikeyexists

Friday evening and Saturday, bloggers from Pittsburgh, Erie, Youngstown, Cleveland, Buffalo, and other cities in this region will be meeting for the first Rust Belt Bloggers Summit.

Our primary goal — or at least, my view of our goal — is to meet and learn about each other and our common interests, with the hope of finding ways to work together. We share the desire to use social media to support and improve our communities; since the cities in the Rust Belt share history and characteristics, we should be able to find a lot in common.

City Paper previewed the event in an article today ("Bloggers to unite under common threads at conference"), with quotes from me and Doug Derda, as well as other thoughtful bloggers in other cities.

If you’re interested in attending, visit the Rust Belt Bloggers website to get details, and come join us. No registration needed; just show up.

Let’s shake off some of this rust, shall we?

I spoke too soon when I said that AMC was the only cable network I needed. I forgot the USA Network.

Burn Notice, my favorite television guilty pleasure, returns Thursday for its second season.

Burn Notice combines the spy techniques and intra-agency backstabbing of the Jason Bourne movies with MacGuyver do-it-yourself surveillance tips, then it adds some Ferris Bueller-type tongue-in-cheek voiceovers, and finally it throws the whole thing on the beaches of Miami. There’s more than enough eye candy for viewers of any gender, and just the right amount of intrigue to keep things interesting.

And the co-stars include Bruce “The Chin” Campbell (of the Evil Dead series) and Sharon Gless (Cagney of the detective series Cagney & Lacey). An abundance of riches.

For a taste of the sensibility of the show, watch this longer, more explanatory promo. Or check out the “Ask a Spy” feature on the show’s website. The show’s lead, Michael Westen (played by the strangely compelling Jeffrey Donovan) answers questions you didn’t know you had. Like, how can I break out of a prison in Turkmenistan? and how can I avoid embarrassing myself when playing sports at a company retreat? Great stuff.

And did you notice the soundtrack of that promo I pasted in above? Yes, that’s Billy Squier singing. Oh yeah.

I wanted to show you a video of Ballboy performing “Something’s Going to Happen.” I envisioned that the title of my post would be “And no one will ever love you as much as I do.” It’s a perfect song for this evening.

Also: It’s true, you know. No one will ever love you as much as I do.

But YouTube doesn’t have a video of the band performing that song. They do have this lovely ditty though. The title is “I Lost You, But I Found Country Music,” and I think you’ll enjoy it.

You might also like this next song, especially the opening narrative. The song is “Avant Garde Music,” again by Ballboy.

I’ve just learned that AMC is remaking The Prisoner, the rather spooky and incomprehensible but wildly engrossing Cold War series that the BBC made in the late 60s.

The original version of The Prisoner starts out like a James Bond story, but then gets very weird. The hero, played by Patrick McGoohan with a constant smirk and raised eyebrow, is a man known only as Number Six. The titles show us that he has resigned from some spy agency, then was kidnapped. He awakens in an isolated seashore community called the Village, from which he can’t escape. Why is he there? Who are these other people in the Village? Why can’t he leave? Who is Number One? It’s all mysterious, and it’s also surreal — the colors, the images, the giant white bubble that captures and returns anyone who tries to escape.

“Be seeing you” is the main catchphrase from the show. It’s how the characters say “goodbye”; there’s no escape, so of course they’ll be seeing you, but also the community is full of spies and security cameras, so at any time someone is seeing you.

The uneasy sensibility of The Prisoner fit the Cold War period perfectly. It also suits our current day, with the erosion of personal liberties by government as well as the loss of privacy via our lives on the Web and the constant sharing of personal data. (Giant Eagle Advantage Card, anyone?)

AMC is already my new favorite cable network, what with the classic movies and novel programming like Mad Men. Soon I won’t need any other channels. Be seeing you, indeed.

The New York Times spends 36 hours in Pittsburgh, and likes what it finds:
…old stereotypes die hard, and Pittsburgh probably doesn’t make many
people’s short list for a cosmopolitan getaway. Too bad, because this
city of 89 distinct neighborhoods is a cool and — dare I say, hip—city.
There are great restaurants, excellent shopping,
breakthrough galleries and prestigious museums. The convergence of
three rivers and surrounding green hills also make it a surprisingly
pretty urban setting.

Brillobox, The City Theatre, La Prima, and the Heinz History Center all are featured, along with standbys like the Incline, The Mattress Factory, and the Warhol Museum.

Purple Loosestrife, originally uploaded by cambodia4kidsorg

Popular opinion has treated the invasive plants as botanical illegal aliens. The Environmental Protection Agency has labeled them as the second-greatest threat to the continent’s biodiversity, exceeded in their impact only by outright destruction of habitat. Major resources have been devoted to the spraying and rooting-out of invasive plants in the belief that their removal would enable an ecological revival. Roughly $45 million, for example, is spent every year in the unsuccessful attempt to stop the spread of a single European wetland weed, purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria).

New research, however, suggests that invasive species, at least in some instances, aren’t so much the causes of environmental degradation as eco-opportunists taking advantage of disturbed habitats. Or, as the biologist Andrew MacDougall of the University of Guelph, Ontario, puts it, the invasives may behave more as “passengers” than as “drivers.”

From Can Weeds Help Solve the Climate Crisis? (NYTimes.com)

I’ve been involved in the past with the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, a wonderful organization that maintains Fallingwater and acts as custodian for natural resources in this state. Several years ago, I attended a workshop on exotic invasive plants, like purple loosestrife, multiflora rose, orange day-lily, and English ivy among many others, and participated in a project to remove purple loosestrife from a stream near here. It was hard and discouraging work: We spent a day carefully cutting off and bagging plants, but made barely any impression in the space.

One frequently cited definition is that a weed is “a plant out of place.” Many of the invasive exotics were brought here originally by well-intentioned gardeners and home owners. Purple loosestrife is rather pretty, for example. But because these plants proliferate so quickly and widely, we view them as weeds.

Now I read in this article in the NY Times that removal efforts like the purple loosestrife project I worked on may indirectly hasten the decline of native species in the area:

For three years [biologist Andrew MacDougall of the University of Guelph] removed the invasive grasses from plots he outlined within [a Nature Conservancy Canada property on Vancouver Island]. In some plots, he did this by mowing or burning; in others, he removed the weeds entirely. Yet the native flora didn’t rebound significantly. In some cases, the decline of the native plant species instead accelerated, and the fundamental character of the flora within the plots began to change, with woody plants encroaching on the formerly open, grassy areas.

MacDougall concluded that rather than serving as drivers of change, the foreign grasses were functioning more in the role of passengers, merely filling in as the natives disappeared. In fact, the foreigners seemed to be serving a stabilizing role. By blocking light from reaching the soil, they inhibited the germination of tree and shrub seeds. Keeping the brush at bay in this fashion preserved the open character of the savanna habitat so that the remnants of the original savanna wildflowers, grasses and wildlife could at least survive. In light of these findings, MacDougall says, he came to believe that the primary cause of the native flora’s decline was human intervention. Before European settlement, fire periodically cleansed the soil surface of dead plant material. Suppression of fire since settlement had allowed a thick layer of litter to accumulate, and the foreign grasses cope better with this than do the natives.

This theary makes sense, yet it also raises the question of what we should do — or not do. It seems impossible to think of not trying to remove fast-growing plants; it’s too easy to imagine a South consumed by kudzu. But until we can find ways to reduce our production of carbon dioxide (which seems to encourage the growth of many other unwelcome plant species), we may find we need to lean on certain invasives to help us preserve other species.

Suddenly, these plants no longer seem quite like weeds any more.

You may wet hard copies of these stories and wrap them on your self and let them dry, like papier-mâché. Afterwards the stories will have taken on the shape of your body.

From “Terms of Use” at Distorte

The Monkees (View Original Article)

A bit of technical help needed: I have a DVD of family films from decades ago. They were originally Super 8 films that my dad had; I took them to Tom Graham of Frames and Pixels, and he put them all on DVD for me, and worked with me to edit them into sequential order. (All for an extremely reasonable price.)

There are some entertaining bits in there, including brief footage of me, aged 1, dancing in front of the television while watching The Monkees. OK, so maybe they’re entertaining only to me and a few others. Still, I’d like to get them online to share.

How to do that? I have the rights to the footage, just need to know the steps to clip a bit of video from a DVD and bring it into iMovie.

If you can offer guidance, please comment or send me an email. (See the Contact page.) Thank you!

Tags: callsfor help, videos

more cat pictures

In the middle of wrapping up projects and starting new work. Back very soon.

(I can has thyme machine?)

Regular readers of this site know I hold no love for the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board and this state’s monopoly on wine and liquor sales. I’ve thought about starting a movement to get these things thrown out. It turns out I don’t need to, because someone else already has.

As part of this, he’s compiling a thoughtful and well-argued list of reasons the PLCB should be abolished. Here’s part of one reason — one that particularly gets my goat.

Reason #4: The Ridiculous 72-Year Old Emergency Tax

You may find this hard to believe, so here’s the proof, right off the PA Dept. of Revenue website. You’ll see at the bottom of the page that the cite is "Emergency Liquor Sales Tax Act, Act of June 9, 1936." The emergency has been over for 70 years, and of course, the money hasn’t gone to the citizens of Johnstown (or…the contractors hired to help the citizens of Johnstown) for many, many years: it goes to the General Fund. It’s just money the State is taking from you every time you buy booze.

The Emergency Tax is an amazing thing, kind of the creamy center of a towering cake of taxes Pennsylvanians pay when they buy booze. First, there’s the actual cost of the packaged beverage. The federal excise tax is added at the producer/importer level. Then the fun starts. The State imposes its set mark-up (for "profit", which in the case of so-called "control states" is really an additional tax, since it all goes to the State) of 30%. Now put that luscious Emergency Tax in there, adding 18% of the cost, the federal excise tax, and the 30% mark-up onto your bill. Think that’s rapacious? Wait, there’s more! That’s right, folks, now you get to add the 6% State sales tax (7% in Philadelphia County)! [Cindy’s note: and in Allegheny County as well.]

Let’s look at that. Say you get a bottle of 100 proof bottled-in-bond bourbon. Cost from producer: $10. Federal excise tax of just about $2.50 (it’s a set amount per gallon of 100 proof liquor; that’s why we bought bottled-in-bond):$12.50. The State’s mark-up of 30% is $3.75: $16.25. Now add the 18% Johnstown Flood Emergency Tax of $2.93 (note that it’s more than the federal tax): $19.18. Top it all off with the 6% sales tax you pay on computers, cars, books, pets, toilet paper (whoops — turns out PA doesn’t tax toilet paper; make that kleenex…which, believe it or not, was what I had there originally, and for some reason, changed it)– $1.15 — and you get a grand total of $20.33. That is more than twice the cost of the whiskey.

From Why The PLCB Should Be Abolished.

Tags: PLCB, Pennsylvania, liquor

My friend Madhu, who has studied, written about, and painted Indian goddesses for many years, suggests these steps to "Experiencing the Goddess Energy": 

Become familiar with various goddess images.

Choose your favorites.

Know her myths; understand the meaning of her symbols and the cultural background in which she historically emerged.

Focus on her visual image and unique power.

Feel that power within you.

More at Spirituality Sparks » Blog Archive » Viewing Goddess Images

Tags: links, goddess

P22 type foundry, the source of fonts I’ve used in several websites (London Underground has been particularly useful) has released a deck of playing cards.

Back in 2004, P22 produced a specimen deck of cards that featured 52 different fonts on a standard regulation deck of playing cards. These were gobbled up quickly, so we held a contest to have guest designers complete a second deck. Briefly lost in the vortex of too many other things, deck #2 is finally finished with all new designs and, dare we say, it’s even better than the first one!

While supplies last, you can get a deck free with any purchase of $100 or more. Just order anything over $100 and add the free card option to your shopping cart and we will send you the cards!

If you don’t think that’s a good enough excuse to buy a  bunch of fonts, are also offering the decks for sale at $10 each plus shipping. Supplies are limited and as black market prices for the first deck indicate, this is a good price indeed.

For a font fan like me who also happens to collect playing cards, this is very welcome news.

It also gets me thinking that I should design a deck of cards myself — perhaps with cocktail recipes on them. Sounds fun, don’t you think?

Remember when I explained how to see a play? If you haven’t already used those five easy steps to see Bust (and you still have another week or so, so get going on that), you might try them out on a new show opening next month at City Theatre: The Wonder Bread Years.

City Theatre announces a special summer engagement of The Wonder Bread Years, a hilarious one-man show by former Seinfeld writer Pat Hazell. An open-ended run of this hit comedy will begin Thursday, July 10, 2008 in City Theatre’s Lester Hamburg Studio. Anyone who remembers Silly Putty and Sugar Pops will love this entertaining salute to Baby Boomer culture, performed at City Theatre by John Mueller.

The Wonder Bread Years features a set that will evoke the typical front porch and yard of an American kid in the 1960s and 70s. With the fast pace of stand-up comedy, plus audience interaction, the show looks back on the food, toys, holiday customs, commercials, and TV shows of an amazing era. Manwich, Spam, the kid’s table, Rock’em Sock’em Robots, milk money, Dilly Bars, road trips in the way-back seat of the family station wagon—these are just a few of the slices of Americana that will be served up in The Wonder Bread Years.

Special promotion for bloggers: Free pairs of tickets are available to bloggers for City Theatre’s production of The Wonder Bread Years for the following performances:

• Sat., July 12 at 9 pm
• Fri., July 18 at 8 pm
• Sat., July 19 at 5:30 pm
• Sun., July 20 at 2 pm

Availability is limited and tickets will be given on a first-come, first-served basis. Contact mromero@citytheatrecompany.org. Requests must be received by July 3 — don’t delay!

Not a blogger? Well, this might be a fine time to start. But you can see the show anyway of course. Find full ticket information and more at the City Theatre website.

Tags: CityTheatre, Pittsburgh, theater, blogging, promotions, events, Wonder Bread Years

Bitter Bourbon   2 oz bourbon (drier varieties preferred)
.5 oz Campari .5 oz green Chartreuse dash orange bitters   Combine in a shaker with ice. Strain into chilled cocktail glass. Serve with orange rind garnish.

It’s Mixology Monday again, and our hosts this month are the Scofflaw’s Den, lovable ruffians and scoundrels that they are. The theme they’ve chosen is: bourbon.

I’m a great fan of bourbon, but I found myself overwhelmed by this month’s theme. So many options! Also, I’ve written a fair bit about bourbon in the past, as has every other cocktail blogger. What new thing could I highlight?

Fortunately, external forces came to my rescue, in the form of weather. It’s now Summer (with a capital S) here in Pennsylvania, temperatures in the 90s and up and humidity arcing skyward. I saw my first firefly tonight; they’ve probably been out for a while, but I’ve been sequestering myself in air-conditioned environments, the better to survive.

(Dear Readers who live in truly hot and humid areas: Yes, I know. This is nothing. I’m a wimp. Think how I’d whine in a really steamy climate!)

Anyway, when the weather grows sticky like this, I’m drawn to one particular bottle: Campari. It’s brisk and bitter and syrupy-sweet all in unison. It comes from Milan, Italy, where things are hot and humid on a regular basis, and it’s based on bitter orange. Technically, it’s a bitter, but one you can mix in larger proportions. It clears the palate and contrasts with the sweltering air, cutting through everything. I adore it in hot weather.

(Side note: Here’s the Campari website. Please be warned that they have concocted a rather stretched fiction about a "world of passion" that needs to be restored, somehow incorporating their ads that involve Salma Hayek but also a bunch of other stuff, and that the whole thing is built in Flash. Enter at your own risk.)

So, this month’s MxMo gave me the opportunity to explore ways to combine two of my favorite liquors, Bourbon and Campari. The trick is what to put with them. Many bourbons come across as sweet, but not sweet enough to balance the tart/bitter one-two punch of Campari. I needed something that brought sugar to the party along with a bonus to unify and blend — herbiness, if possible.

The first thing I tried, which worked delightfully, was Benedictine. Most unfortunately, I used up my last bit of Benedictine in that preliminary experiment, and when I went to the local retail arm of the PLCB to get another bottle I was informed that the commonwealth of Pennsylvania no longer carries that item. I won’t waste the rest of this post with my curses on that particular arm of government.

It seems that a few other states face related Benedictine shortages, so I searched for an alternative. Maraschino liqueur was too sweet by far, Amari too thick. What to do?

I tried green Chartreuse, and my problems were solved. Chartreuse brings in the sweetness to balance Campari’s bitter elements, but not so much as to overwhelm. And it carries a few bits of herby flavor to boot.

For my bourbon, I used Wild Turkey (80 proof), which I find combines well with many things without losing its character, and which is quite reasonably priced. 

I suspect that the resulting cocktail will please me and few others. It’s a warm variant on a Negroni; the Negroni has been memorably described as "the reverse of a mullet — party in the front (sweet), and business in the back (mild bitter aftertaste)." The addition of bourbon warms the combination, while adding green Chartreuse makes it more complicated than related vermouth variations. If you do try it and like it, I’d love to know. If you’ve already invented it and have been drinking it for years, I’d definitely love to know — you can probably save me some experimentation in the future.

But in the meantime, everyone needs to swing over to Scofflaw’s Den, to see what they’ve been shaking up. It’s sure to be a delight.

Cheers!

Tags: MixologyMonday, cocktails, lush life, bourbon, campari, videos

Natchez, Miss. (LOC), originally uploaded by The Library of Congress.

When I talk with people about Flickr, the easy parts to explain are the aspects of organizing and sharing your own photos. Some folks get stuck on the sharing aspect; “why would I want everyone to see my personal photos?” they ask, and then I talk about the privacy settings.

But the unique and amazing aspects of Flickr go beyond sorting and sharing, and I find these harder to explain. There’s the fact that Flickr can be a personal archive or anything, not just photos. But it’s also a national archive and a way to document bigger experiences.

Take, for example, the Flickr sets of the Library of Congress. Thus far there are two, one with images from newspapers in the 1910s and one of color slides from the 1930s-1940s. The image above is from the latter group. They’re intriguing and absorbing to flip through, they’re documented with dates and locations and other details, and they’re all available to use in your own works.

Why is the U.S. Library of Congress doing this?

We’ve been acquiring photos since the mid-1800s when photography was the hot new technology. Because images represent life and the world so vividly, people have long enjoyed exploring our visual collections. Looking at pictures opens new windows to understanding both the past and the present. Favorite photos are often incorporated in books, TV shows, homework assignments, scholarly articles, family histories, and much more.

The Prints & Photographs Division takes care of 14 million of the Library’s pictures and features more than 1 million through online catalogs. Offering historical photo collections through Flickr is a welcome opportunity to share some of our most popular images more widely.

They invite the public to help in this project by tagging photos and solving “mysteries” by tagging photos and suggesting details.

I’ve been enjoying reading “Is that blogging?” recently. (I found it through Tremble, btw.) I don’t know who the author is, but apparently he is currently 25 and living in Dublin, and he enjoys live music. I believe his first name is Pierce.

He seems to write fiction and poetry sometimes.

He’s interesting and thoughtful, and also sort of funny, as evidenced by this and this, and also this.

Isn’t the web fun?

Tags: links