Home Sweet Home

This morning while I was reading last Thursdays Home section in the New York Times and drinking my second cup of tea Danae poked her head around the corner and said, "there's a tour group standing in front of the house go look." Sure enough the Saturday morning Florence History Trail tour given by one of our local historians Steve Strimer has paused his group on our sidewalk and they're learning about the houses' history. We live, I've recently found out, in the Joshia White Cottage built in 1811 and moved to it's current location in 1879 (yes, they did that sort of thing all the time). The site where it had been before then became the very large brick mill building that sits on the edge of the Mill River just down the hill and around the corner from us. They saved our house and moved it probably a little more than half a mile (depending on the route they took). Thanks.

I've known it was an old house, but I was thinking Civil War era, not that much earlier. Joshia White ran a grist mill on the Mill River and built a large dam there to harness the water power for the mill. So it turns out our house was one of the earlier buildings in Florence. That's fun.

Florence has a proud and old tradition of abolitionists and workers industrial communes in the early nineteenth century. The communes were based on the concept of "free labor" or in other words, non-slave labor. They tried raising silk worms to compete with cotton cloth – a slave crop, but the New England weather didn't work out. Sojourner Truth lived around the corner from my house, just across the graveyard that's our quiet neighbor.

So it's fun to actually live in a part of local history and feel that connection of ideas and time, even while I mow the lawn. I've started to read Lydia Maria Child books to get a sense of what they though and how they lived. She was a active abolitionists who lived in our house for a few years around 1820 after Joshia White moved out and then rented it. Lydia was the Martha Stewart of her time, but switched to more impassioned anti-slaver topics. It's quite impressive. I'll have to learn more just to feel that I fit in to the responsibilities of the house.

gunther

All I Know About The System Is What People Tell Me

Accounting wise the end of the year is always fraught with peril, confusion, anger and surprises. This year was no different. We had been warned to "use it or lose it" or "if you don't spend it they will" and several sentiments similar to that. It's a little paranoid, a little bitter, and a little true which motivates all of us to rush to judgments on items we've been thinking about way too long and now need to frantically purchase on the spot.

I usually try to resist the madness and haste, but it's hard not to get swept up in the fury. We're in such a moment of change. Change in the basement labs with the film/photo people pulling back into their own building, change in the formats and methods of recording video with SD cards, changes in the storage requirements of footage as we move more quickly into full HD. In other words there are a lot of places to spend a couple of hundred dollars, but as always some more wisely than others.

With the studio space returning to the possibility of actually becoming a studio again after several years being used only as a classroom the desirability of adding more lights was too captivating to resist. I really enjoy lighting. It's both a skill and an art and takes place in that quiet time, just before all of the shooting starts. Well, sometimes it's really frantic and pressured and then the shooting starts. In the old days we used the overhead light grids with most all of the lights turned on. Now I like to use much smaller, less expensive, more controllable stand lights – the little Pro-Lights from Lowell. Not only are they actually cute, but they're easy to use and give the quality of light we need now when we use much more sensitive cameras. OK, we've got a couple of soft boxes in the studio too. So a pair of Pro-Lights, a hand full of Avenger Maxi light stands. These are the best light stands I've ever used and they go up to 11 feet tall.(You know I've never liked C-stands. Maybe if I were in a more industrial production world I'd get used to them, but I'm lower on the food-chain, more local, more independent and yes, cheap. C-stands stack well in a truck or on a wall, but for throwing in a bag and traveling I like basic floor stands.) A couple of barndoors, a couple of snoots and bang I'm at $770 easily.

Just a little more money left, what to do, maybe that hybrid DSLR concept I've been dreaming about? We all are intrigued by the ability of new DSLR still cameras to also shoot quite reasonable HD video. It's a merging of photography and video that we never really thought would happen, but it has and it has a lot of ramifications that only direct experimentation can actually show us. (I'm a big believer in the value of direct experimentation to discover hidden meanings and appropriate methods.) So we need to get one at some point – why not now. So after spending a day going back and forth over the mangled handful of cameras available I selected the Canon EOS T1i for around $850. Well by this time there's less money in the budget than I thought (it's due to mingled accounts – OK that's another topic I know) so now I'm short of money by $400 and I trot off to talk with Andrew with my hat held out and yes, what a guy, he says sure he'll kick in the extra. Now we're short on time so thinking it will be the fastest paperwork turn-around I head off to the local Best Buy to get the camera.

Before I left I went on-line and printed out their price of $849 to have in hand in case the price had gone up in the store. Sure enough when I get there it's listed for close to $900. After waiting for about 10 minutes for someone to finally wait on me I have the camera in hand and go to the check out. They'll grant me the on-line price, no problem. I also have with me four sheets of paper describing in difference state forms that I'm a tax deductible institution. I'm all set. I show them the paper work, they hum a few times, show it back and forth to each other, ask for my drivers license, Xerox it all, then I hand them my corporate credit card and they ring me up. Declined. What? Declined. Your card has been declined. Great. Why? Oh it doesn't tell us that, but it doesn't go through that's all we know.

So the next day back at school I ask everyone why the card was declined. No one knows. I call the business office and find that now is a great time for most everyone to be on vacation and they are. Finally, I talk with a very nice and knowledgeable woman who tells me my credit limit has been reduced to $1,500 and that's why it bounced. Why? Don't know. Normally that's not a problem, but this summer I'm buying items for the new Liebling Center and I've been spending $1,500 a week for them alone. My limit had been raised to $10,000, but now it's back down. She suggests getting a PO for the amount and that way it's in the system and I've got 10 days before the paper work needs to clear. Good idea, I'll do that. I thank her for her kind help.

Now I'm off to get someone to help me write up a PO in Datatel our enterprise software. I hate Datatel and have found it one of the worst software applications I've ever used in my life. It makes no sense, there's no reason for anything, it looks horrible and it never tells me anything I really want to know – other than that it's fine. As I've found in on-line discussions people in my world think all enterprise software sucks. It's a bunch of aggregated feature sets that make up a disjointed collection of capabilities that only managers who buy enterprise software like ("Oh, look what it can do". The real question should be, "what does it feel like when you use it?" That too is another story and maybe the most important of all - hum.). I'm used to working with the best software in the world which is really quite easy to use and has the most important element of all - discoverability. You can teach yourself how to use it. It's easy and fun. Datatel on the other hand makes no sense and needs to be learned by rote. It works this way period and it's never any fun. So help I need. Hey, it's Friday afternoon now and every one is gone for the day. I'm help-less.

Andrew suggests just calling B&H and ordering it with his corporate credit card. OK, I'm worn down, let's try it. He calls, the price is only $800 with them, wow, let's do it. He does. Declined. Same thing. Your credit limit gets dropped and no one tells you! OK, let it go, just walk away. It's not worth thrashing around trying to use up the $400. (Did I mention that I'm on vacation. Yes, these last two weeks of my vacation I've worked every day. OK it's my choice. To me work is fun, but it's still a nuisance and certainly is to my wife.) I'm sure the school can use it somewhere else in the budget. It's my donation. The real problem is if you spend the money, but don't get it to register in this years budget you lose the money and then still have to pay for the item out of next years money, so it's like losing the money twice. It's not worth it.

Time passes.

Now it's the next week and I get an e-mail from Andrew saying the camera just came in. What? Yep, B&H shipped it. At some point Andrew's card reset his monthly limit and the order went through. Now we've got that great hybrid DSLR camera to work with. What a life.

Now all I need are some sandbags for the light stands.

gunther