Understanding the Middle Passage (often called the Mid-life Crisis)
This is an older video interview that I return to again and again. It remains relevant. I recommend starting one minute in (1:00) to avoid the chaotic music and aerobic dancers of the 1980’s which can distract from the discussion that follows.
The Ups and Down of Learning to be Digitally Literate
I had an interesting and challenging few days this week trying to transfer a large audio file to someone else through Wetransfer. I’m not really familiar with this file-sharing program, but since the audio file was very large, I was told that this was the best and quickest method to use. Apparently, this should have been straightforward process, but it turned into a preoccupation and at least one sleepless night. Wetransfer couldn’t complete the process despite many attempts.
I Could Drink a Case of You – A Joni Mitchell Grocery List by Leanne Shapton
https://wepresent.wetransfer.com/story/literally-leanne-shapton/
I discovered this story while trying, albeit unsuccessfully, to transfer a very large audio file using WeTransfer. The story popped up, and I had to read it because I love Joni Mitchell. It’s a lovingly illustrated story, by Leanne Shapton, which incorporates some of Joni Mitchell’s food-related song lyrics and Leanne’s personal menu. Leanne doesn’t like to cook, preferring restaurant meals, but she had little choice but to resign herself to preparing meals for her daughter and herself during the Pandemic since restaurants were and continue to be off-limits.
“Mechanical Draftsperson”
In my follow-up readings by and about Donna Haraway, I hadn’t yet picked up Eric’s reference to weaving as a specific topos within techno-feminism. Noting the digital punchcard system of the Jacquard loom, however, I recognized a personal connection.
I worked in the Montréal needletrade from about 1989 to 2005, in commercial embroidery design for garment embellishment. When I started as a mechanical draftsperson, the next-stage digitizing of the designs that instructed the industrial machines was still sometimes encoded on rolls of punched paper tapes, although diskettes were replacing this medium. My boss–an old master of his trade–was still entitled Embroidery Puncher, and I remember him at work unspooling great coiling mounds of pink or purple tape, as he searched, I think, for the coded errors or points of adjustment he was to repair and improve.
Well, “mechanical draftsperson…” I’ve used the most descriptive terms I can come up with–graphic artist would be too catch-all, and the usual job title, Embroidery Designer, sounds extravagantly misleading.
My first job was in Ville St-Laurent, although we served larger companies in the Montréal garment district around Chabanel, notably Conrad C. Collections. And I say mechanical or technical drawing because I worked by hand, at a drafting table, with instruments such as mechanical pencils, rules, compasses and dividers. The standard procedure was to take the customer’s artwork, usually printed at 1:1, and enlarge it by wall projection to 6:1 proportions (3:1, if by practical necessity), tracing the image on large sheets of paper cut from a hefty roll. (I think we used white bond at the time, only later translucent vellum.) I then redrew the design with geometric accuracy while incorporating specific modifications that would permit it to be rendered in thread. For example, lettering in a logo (uniform or jacket embroidered ID was a common customer item) had to be no smaller than 6mm enlarged height, and spaced accordingly, to be legibly sewn. A line to be embroidered in satin stitch similarly equalled a minimum of 6mm width. (Machine sewn running stitches were too unstable to replicate legible design consistently across large runs; they were more often used for floral decoration.) At the same time, a “left chest” embroidery should at best not exceed 3.5 inches, maximum 4; and of course the look of a copyrighted design had to still be preserved within these technical constraints. A balancing act, yes.
(This is only lesson 1 in course 100, you understand; imagine all those police, firemen’s, fraternity, and municipal crests with titles and mottoes tightly inscribed within concentric circles…proudly worn as embroidered patches on the shoulders of the elect.)
At each stage we worked the traditional enlargement process to ensure minimal design error upon reduction to actual size–a compensation for the irregularity of rapid mass production by multiple machines and operators.
My large drawing then went to the board of the Puncher, who scanned it with a mounted, sliding cross-hair cursor to create the sewing programme that was plotted onscreen at an adjacent monitor. This was micro-engineering at a much higher level of complexity than drawing, because the Puncher digitized a dimensional design path both spatially and temporally for production, planning for the greatest efficiency and economy in colour changes and stops, the fewest repeat passes, the optimal stitch count. In the very best work, the inevitable consequence was the greatest elegance as well.
But the bottom line was never romantic. Time is money: “IS THE MACHINE STILL RUNNING?” My first boss claimed to have once threaded the sewing heads as they ran, despite having a needle or two plunge through his thumb in this School of Hard Knocks. Little wonder a master puncher’s heritage of time-honed techniques, his private programmes and strategies, were hard-earned, closely-guarded trade secrets before the coming of the Microsoft share-ware era that swept first local production and then digitizing offshore to the Orient.
So, just as a final aside: I worked about 2 years at this first job, at a fixed rate of $7.00 an hour, and commuted by Metro and bus for a total of 2 1/2 to 3 hours each 8 am to 5/6 pm weekday–with occasional Saturdays, of course. And while my senior colleague, Suzanne, was “The Best Girl,” I was still ” A Great Girl.” Me too. But…yeah, kinda proud of it.
Musician Yoko Sen became determined to transform the hospital soundscape after a harsh hospital stay
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/u-k-vaccine-rollout-why-seth-loves-christmas-ghost-stories-a-musician-takes-on-hospital-noise-and-more-1.5835992/hospital-noise-is-hurting-patients-and-caregivers-these-sound-designers-want-to-change-that-1.5836011
Imagine a hospital stay in which the background noise was not the constant or intermittent sound of buzzers, beeps, bells, pings, etc.
Instead, imagine the sound of tranquil music, ocean waves, bird song, the sound of a breeze through the trees, a soundscape that actually facilitates healing.
Dancing Her Way Through Life -Twyla Tharp, American Dancer and Choreographer
Definitely worth a listen: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/q/thursday-dec-10-2020-colman-domingo-twyla-tharp-and-more-1.5835597 (Her interview begins at 25:00)
Twyla says, “Being as strong as you can possibly be physically your entire life is a good investment for the long term.” You can hear the strength in her voice as she advocates for movement throughout the life cycle. She says that the disease we suffer from is denial of aging rather than aging itself. So, hop on your bicycle (when spring returns) and, in the meantime, walk, run, stretch, skate, ski, weight-lift, dance, do yoga, Tai Chi, etc. Find something you love that feeds your heart and soul and keeps your body moving.
I’m off to dance in my living room to my favourite music, The Cranberries singing ‘Linger.’
Karin
Out of the Closet and Back in Again
I’ve been editing my podcast and, after many frustrations, I’ve come to love editing more than recording. However, through editing, I discovered the need to re-record certain words that were unclear due to inaudible prefixes; thereby, giving some statements the opposite meaning. Well, I just couldn’t let that go!
So, I pulled out the big old empty suitcase and the large empty box that I’m saving for an imminent move that will likely be initiated by my landlord as he tries to evict the six remaining tenants of an apartment building equipped with 19 apartments. How much of Montreal’s housing crisis is due to similar evictions and empty apartments slated for gentrification? I digress.
I re-recorded the unsatisfactory sentences but when I inserted them into the perfect spots, they were too soft and hollow-sounding. I need to re-record them to my satisfaction. So, I will try again ensuring that the volume is the same as the original recordings and, hopefully, the hollowness will also be gone.
Wish me luck.
Karin
Stories from the Womb of my Closet
As I work through the creation of my first podcast, I’ve been paying attention to the process which finds me starting, stopping, and then procrastinating before getting back to it. What are these internal and external barriers that catch me up and hold me in place, not doing what I need to do?
George Kinloch – Banking on Life
George Kinloch – Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Kinloch came to Canada in 1952, working for the Dominian Bank. After retirement at 62 he remained active with his Scottish roots, in organizations such as the Sons of Scotland and The Black Watch. He also became involved in the arts, managing the Mountain Playhouse at alongside Joy Thompson, who influenced the careers of renowned actors Christopher Plummer and William Shatner. (more…)