Doesn’t feel like Monday.
Monday, July 20th, 2020
As the city of Atlanta begins—really, what else can you call it?—an unusual, virus-affected, undefined period of mourning for Congressman John Lewis (and fellow compatriot C.T. Vivian), it somehow feels evasive to be out of our home town and way up North in very Upper Michigan where I feel as if 4 out of 5 residents would be unable to distinguish between photos of Lewis and fallen Congressional colleague Elijah Cummings.
And a month ago, the tiny general store that had a simple “you must wear a mask” sign on the door (we noted proudly) now has a page-long babble that talks about 4th amendment freedoms and exceptions and HIPAA—all the, forgive me, bullshit that people have been dragging out because they just don’t want to wear a mask. My first reaction was to want to rip that sign off the storefront and stomp in and tell owner Steve that this is garbage and he should be ashamed and…well, we were tired from the road.
We still are. We’ll see how I feel tomorrow. (And besides, I’ve been trying to stomp less in daily life.)
Meanwhile, the Georgia Democrats have chosen Nikema Williams, a state senator and the head (the first Black woman head) of the Democrats in the state. I would proudly vote for her. I will proudly vote for her.
Cough, cough.
Sunday, July 19th, 2020
Well, sure it says that, but that doesn’t mean that I didn’t see a lot, and I do mean a lot of people exercising their particular combination of self-oriented-freedom and general cluelessness.
This was Kentucky. A truck stop in southern Kentucky. We also saw lots of places that said on the door “wear a mask by order of Governor Andy Bashear,” done in a font that somehow carried the message of “it’s that guy saying it, not us.”
And then out front of this place (above), a family got together unmasked and lit up really foul cigarettes, inches from our passenger door.
I felt like I had dropped in from another century.
John Lewis, marching on.
Saturday, July 18th, 2020
There’s the public grief, there’s the political manifestations of grief, and then I’m sure there’s a very private sort of grief that is reserved for the immediate family of our Congressman. Our grief, though personal, is at a certain remove…we’d see John and his good works, but we were not there marching by his side, except maybe in spirit.
For us, Congressman Lewis was one of those forces of nature that, when we saw his efforts manifest themselves, working a jubilant crowd in an Atlanta neighborhood, meeting and inspiring a youthful generation of activists at DragonCon or Comic Con with his (three-part!) graphic novel that told his story and through that, the story of a vitally important movement or, seeing him seated with his fellow protestors on the floor of the House of Representatives itself, pushing hard for gun control legislation in the wake of yet another mass shooting…we could say “that’s the guy who represents us.” “That’s the guy who’s there for all our neighbors.” “That’s a guy who is not in it to make a killing in the stock market on the side.” “There’s John Lewis.”
As you well know, he died Friday, the same day that another veteran civil rights fighter, C.T. Vivian passed away.
I’ll sure miss seeing him…there.
Painting in.
Friday, July 17th, 2020
I found a stack of negatives in some stuff I retrieved from the basement, and after some finicking with the transparency adapter part of our flatbed scanner, I brought a few into the digital domain.
When they’ve been in the basement for decades one shouldn’t be surprised if they have loads of dust and scratches…huge, huge scratches across the surface, folds in the negatives itself, seemingly insurmountable problems.
But there’s a tool in several modern paint programs. Photoshop calls it the ‘healing brush’ and Affinity Photo calls it the ‘inpainting brush’.
The problem is that a paint program can’t know what’s “underneath” a scratch or film damage—what isn’t there now.
So if you use the traditional erase tools, you’d just end up with a solid color of nothing…because it’s got nothing.
But the inpainting tool does a lot of evaluating images and patterns and figures out first of all, if you sloppily draw a line over a scratch, that there is something in that swiped-over area that I don’t want, and it’s smart enough to figure it’s probably substantially brighter or darker than a lot of the underlying picture. It also does some frequency analysis and determines that the damage is, often, crisper than the underlying image that has been scratched. It seems like magic: you casually draw a fat red line over the problem, and then the software kicks in.
Affinity offers this not-very helpful description: “Complex algorithms then take over to harvest information from the surrounding areas of the image in order to reconstruct the missing data.”
So it figures out that there’s a pattern to the fuzzy record albums in this case and constructs appropriate color (or greyscale) values to fill in just the scratched part.
It takes a fraction of a second…sometimes an entire section, if you’re inpainting a large area.
This works great for power lines, unwanted people or animals, but most importantly dust and scratches. Its batting average of doing the right thing is remarkable…and if you don’t like its choices, hit undo and try again.
It’s amazing. It’s a huge timesaver.
Fractional dimensions.
Thursday, July 16th, 2020
Just to follow up from yesterday, no matter how much nostalgia I have for the 1960s and 1970s, I’m very grateful to have worked as a designer in an era where you didn’t have to measure radiuses in fractional inches ( 2 ¹⁷⁄₃₂ inches!) and use a slide rule or a proportional scale to calculate how big this thing would be on a 15-foot-wide blank space on the side of a boxcar.
You just say: here’s the vector file. PDF. SVG. Illustrator EPS. Whatever.
And you’re ready to roll.
Penn Central commute.
Wednesday, July 15th, 2020
The Biden campaign released an ad a few days ago that talks about the importance of family. I particularly like it because it shows a guy commuting from Washington to Wilmington, Delaware daily to be with his kids. And in this picture, he’s shown with the pre-Amtrak metroliner, sporting that fine, fine Penn Central logo.
Yes, I say that a bit ironically, because the PC railroad was formed from the awkward merger of two huge northeast lines, the Pennsylvania and the New York Central, and it struggled under mountains of debt and a fair amount of mismanagement and inability to make early computer systems work together.
But it was also the rail line that ran during the early 1970s down the hill from our house in Grandview Heights, Ohio, so it’ll always be, in that sense, the “home team” for me.
And that logo and their font—based on the italic version of Microgramma—is also a classic of the era.
We see you there, Joe.
Bastille.
Tuesday, July 14th, 2020
Some tweet rolled by my eyeballs this afternoon and I turned to Sammy and said “Happy Bastille Day.”
When we were in Paris in March, 2018, they had a, how you say, scaffolding around the July Column.
She said “There’s your blog post right there.”
Happy Bastille Day, everyone!
It’s le quatorze juillet, the 14th of July, the day in 1789 that the Bastille Saint-Antoine, a castle-y thing built to defend Paris from eastern invaders, among other things, was surrounded by the classic angry mob with pretensions of liberation, and drama ensued.
The partisans of the Third Estate (what a noble sounding name for a ragtag crew) had earlier stormed the Hôtel des Invalides in search of stored weapons. Their quarry had largely been moved to the Bastille, which was housing only seven prisoners (Wikipedia says four forgers, one attempted assassin, one “lunatic” and one “deviant aristocrat.”)
There was chaos, there was miscommunication, there was attacking, there was doubling-down, and when the dust had settled, it counted as a successful insurrection against Louis XVI.
I’m not really sure why. I was not a history major in school.
The building itself was demolished almost immediately after the attack. Now there’s one of Paris’s lovely places with a column (see photo) in the center of it. They kinda kept track of the stones from the building—some ended up on the Pont de la Concorde bridge, some were carved into tiny replicas of the Bastille itself. You can see some of the original foundation in a Metro stop underneath, but for my money, the Metro signage by type legends Adrian Frutiger and Jean-Francois Porchez is more compelling.
Instasquares(II).
Monday, July 13th, 2020
On February 9, 155 days before today’s post, I blogged that “Sometimes I use a script to make a mosaic of my Instagram pics to try and figure out exactly what life I’ve been living the past few months.”
Y’know? I don’t think this tells me anything that profound except I like old TV gear too much and I really need to get out more.
Sponge, proof, fondant.
Sunday, July 12th, 2020
We’ve been looking for televised content that leaves us, I dunno, less stressed at the end of the day. Even during the week, taking on even an hour of news leaves us with, I dunno a sort of ache for our fellow human beings. We’re keeping touch with events, but we’re trying to not obsess.
So it’s The Great British Baking Show, which is the PBS/Netflix rename of The Great British Bake Off. (Why did they change the name? I really don’t know.) We’ve just finished watching a season from 2012. So, the original hosts, and fabled judge Mary Berry along with Paul Hollywood.
Ahh. No politics. No pandemic. Quaint! For an hour at a time, at least.
Careful.
Saturday, July 11th, 2020
I’m coming across more and more writing that addresses the mental health issues associated with the lockdown, the pandemic, and the clash between those who are obeying the…rules? Recommendations? Challenges to your personal freedom? and those who cry out in defiance, and, in some cases, succumb to the virus just because, well, they weren’t careful.
Ah, whatever. I’m happy to see significant percentages of my neighbors are masking up in store situations, which is really the only place I have close encounters. I’m having no trouble staying within those guidelines, although I have to admit to a slight fraying at the edges. Not the edges of the guidelines…the edges of my mental well being. I’m well aware that mental stress can have physiological impacts, so I’m trying to be careful about that too.
This weekend, as dire reports of large numbers of new cases come in from many states, I also sense a greater overall “yeah, it’s no fun, but let’s get with the program” feeling. There’s no doubt that this is a different look:
The President visits Walter Reed hospital on Saturday. Photo via CNN.
I’m going to resist the urge to pile on and…just take a few deep breaths and sit back with satisfaction and await a change in upper management. Mr. blue tie has got to go.
Ten days in.
Friday, July 10th, 2020
What kind of month has July been? It’s Friday the 10th. I started by describing it as a roller-coaster month, then took a day to encourage nonprofits not to market, not to incessantly plead for support, but just do the thing they set out to do.
Then, we heard fireworks throughout the neighborhood on the eve of Independence, and on the fourth itself, I distracted myself from booming sounds with road signs. Afterwards, I just tossed of a sentence or two about what freedom is, was, could be.
By July 6th, I obliquely discussed my experiment in taking on old white guy forum bullies far from where most other folks I know would explore (I may discuss this in more detail after I’ve pondered it a bit), and glanced at the PPP program and how you could search for the recipients in your town, your state, your zip code. I returned from Target and Kroger and was pleased to see a (very) high mask-using percentage, although I have to tell you there were a lot of folks outside today in 90 degree heat in Midtown Atlanta and many did not even have masks at the ready.
Finally, yesterday I mentioned a Spanish language heist series on Netflix we are enjoying, because when the evening comes on in Atlanta in midsummer and it’s still hot, hot, hot, it’s nice to consume content with your dear spouse. In the air conditioning.
I think the roller coaster continues.
La drama de papel.
Thursday, July 9th, 2020
Oh, let’s see, there’s El Profesor, there’s Tokyo, Rio, Nairobi, Denver, Stockholm, Lisbon, Helsinki, Palermo, Marseille, and Bogota. And a couple of the characters in this world-famous gang of robbers, celebrity masters of the grand heist were in fact on the other side in the early episodes, either as a hostage or with the police. There’s even a newborn named as the other code names, Cincinnati.
Because the professor is brilliant and he is working with an elaborate plan (as we are told) he has assembled a team of people and, during an intense training regimen, forbade them from using real names (hence the cities) and told them romantic relationships were also right out (so, of course, they happen with surprising frequency). These are, of course, beautiful and handsome robbers, even in matching red jumpsuits, with or without their Salvador Dalí masks.
This takes place in Spain. They’re (for the most part) speaking Spanish and we’re doing our best to keep up with the subtitles and listen to the Euro-Spanish words, idioms, and accents, so different from the Mexican Spanish Sammy has give me a teeny bit of exposure to. I now think of Spanish as an amalgam of vocabularies and regional accents, and, ah, thank goodness for subtitles.
It’s called La Casa de Papel (the house of paper) because one of the two heists is at the Spanish mint, where huge printing presses churn out Euros.
The show has been purchased by Netflix (which is how we’re watching it) and in English they gave it the totally generic title Money Heist. I like the original title much more. It was a big big hit in Europe generally, winning International Emmy Awards and others.
It is a great cultural experience, part Robin Hood, part telenovela, because the subtext, oft-subverted and twisted sideways, is as classic as a story of class struggle, and when you fold in the European reaction to the financial crash in 2008 and the Profesor’s depiction of their acts as “the resistance,” hacking into capitalism at its very source…well, it’s a complex story, told in (as is the fashion now) many time shifts and with narration that may or may not be reliable.
We’re enjoying it.
More cities require masks.
Wednesday, July 8th, 2020
I’ve been to grocery stores and to (long story) two different Atlanta Targets in the past few days. I’m very pleased to report that the percentage of people wearing masks in the big boxes and the food stores has been very very high, almost 100%.
Really good to see.
But the President is going to force the CDC to redefine its health guidelines for reopening schools this fall. He is, not to mince words, trying to force them to open.
Really disturbing to read.
Just another day in July in 2020.
PPPlease.
Tuesday, July 7th, 2020
The full name of the program, that maybe we don’t hear often enough, is the Paycheck Protection Program. It’s operated out of the Small Business Administration. It is supposed to supply small businesses with loans to keep employees on the payroll…here, here’s the official wording:
The Paycheck Protection Program is a loan designed to provide a direct incentive for small businesses to keep their workers on the payroll.
SBA will forgive loans if all employee retention criteria are met, and the funds are used for eligible expenses. Click here to read more about PPP loan forgiveness.
The loan will be fully forgiven if the funds are used for payroll costs, interest on mortgages, rent, and utilities (due to likely high subscription, at least 60% of the forgiven amount must have been used for payroll).
- PPP loans have an interest rate of 1%.
- Loans issued prior to June 5 have a maturity of 2 years. Loans issued after June 5 have a maturity of 5 years.
- Loan payments will be deferred for six months.
- No collateral or personal guarantees are required.
- Neither the government nor lenders will charge small businesses any fees.
Sounds pretty good as these things go, right? And then we heard stories about not-so-small businesses, some very large businesses who applied for and got large loans.
And then the Secretary of the Treasury was being all circumspect about who was actually getting these things.
But as the New York Times reported today:
We now know the names of many of the businesses that received small-business rescue loans, after a huge data dump yesterday by the Trump administration, which had initially fought to keep the details secret. […]
Here are some of the recipients of PPP money that may raise eyebrows:• Investment firms that manage billions, including Semper Capital Management, Domini Impact Investments and Brevet Holdings.
• At least 45 major law firms, including Boies Schiller Flexner, Kasowitz Benson Torres and Wiley Rein.
• Some companies connected to federal lawmakers or their families, including the Republican representatives Markwayne Mullin and Devin Nunes and the Republican senator Susan Collins (whose brothers’ business later returned its loan), as well as Ms. Collins’s Democratic challenger, Sara Gideon.
• Several start-ups that still laid off employees.
• The Ayn Rand Institute, which is dedicated to the anti-statist philosopher, and an arm of Americans for Tax Reform, the group founded by the famously anti-tax activist Grover Norquist.
Yee-gads. I was pleased when someone took the data and created a site where you could easily browse the loan grants for here in atlanta (or anywhere.)
A lot of the loans were for modest amounts ($150-350k) and a lot of them were for familiar restaurant LLCs around town. And, ah, there’s our dentist, keeping her staff on board when they couldn’t see patients. There’s the company who did tree work for us. But then, down into the Cs, I spot a familiar large Atlanta law firm, Cooper Carry. Wow, $5-$10 million, with an eye to retaining 325 jobs. Churches. Car dealers. King of Pops, the Atlanta fancy popsicle people, got $350K to $1 million to help retain 40 jobs. King and King Law, $350K to $1 million. Their listing says (this may be wrong) jobs retained: 0.
So when is a small business not a small business? In some ways I want to see as many of my neighbors and the places they work protected through this process, and this certainly seems like…a way. But would direct payments make more sense, especially when some of the loan recipients (it seems) are not directly transferring the money to payroll.
One guy on Twitter, with all the succinctness that 280 characters affords said “forgive the rent, forgive the mortgages, forgive the property taxes, pay a monthly check for expenses, and medicare for all” which inevitably (and appropriately) gets into a discussion of fair wages, fair rents, and fair health care.
The pattern of this year.
Monday, July 6th, 2020
I’m not proud of my continued inability to avoid engaging with folks online in this pandemic-y, protest-filled election year.
I get other things done. I get the trash out to the curb on Monday nights. The bills appear to be paid.
But then I see some online snark that blames a fictional partisan “mainstream media”, I have to break out a keyboard (even if it’s just the teeny one on my iPad screen) and start whomping elegantly-crafted paragraphs of passion and, yes, patriotism and casting it off into the ether with a satisfying poke of “post reply.”
This is why I could not exist (nor would I want to) on Facebook, not even for a day. My latest engagements haven’t been on the Twitter or the Instagram, just some not-that-important special interest forum that seems to attract a bunch of guys who like to take shots at Hillary Clinton (still!?) or any Obama or any woman or…agggh.
I like to write! I like words! I like making a coherent argument in a paragraph or two! My (diminishing?) faith in my own writing abilities leads me to the “post reply” precipice again and again.
I’m not proud. But that’s the pattern of this year.
The day after Independence.
Sunday, July 5th, 2020
I think what worries me the most are the folks who say: “independence equals freedom. I can do whatever I want, that’s what the founding fathers fought for, my right to do whatever I want.”
I want to turn to their grade school teachers and say “how did you explain America to these people!?” Maybe that’s unfair. It’s probably unfair.
But there’s more to being this country than having freedom. There’s the responsibility of taking care of others. And it feels like the list of our neighbors who need care and patience and whatever else we can offer is growing by the day.
Stock up on some loud noises just off I-24 between Chattanooga and Monteagle, Tennessee. Our photo from June, 2017.
