The Doncast

Remodeling our Cities

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 05:39:19 PST

The top 20 Remodeling Markets have been listed and Chicago juuuust makes it in at number 20, up from number 22 last year. Everybody keep your fingers crossed.

Why is this important?

Remodeling basically *is* the residential construction industry in cities. The high end of this market was where I made my bread and butter for around 15 years. Then it ended.

Most of the remodeling jobs I used to work on were a result of the property changing hands, with the cost of freshening up the bathroom and kitchen rolled into the mortgage. As @PeanutFreeMom would say,"Um, yeah, hi, nobody's buying houses anymore."

People are not moving. Some of this is due to poor employment opportunities and some of this is due to real estate values returning to historic norms. (I feel it is much better on a lot of levels to think of the current real estate situation in these terms rather than the "plummeting housing values" you usually hear about.) People who bought overvalued housing can't sell and are stuck.
Say the J.Q. Public family does need to move from Urban Home A to Urban Home B. Unable to sell Home A, they turn it into a rental. Unsure of their future in the present economy and without the cash in hand from a sale, they are also likely to rent Home B instead of buying.

This is something I think gets overlooked in discussions about construction employment. Ten years ago, the J.Q.Public family move would have likely resulted in two sales, two mortgages, and-rolled into those two mortgages-two remodeling jobs. It now results in two rental units. Nobody remodels a rental between tenants. Yes, some do, but rarely, and even then, they are quick and dirty business propositions done to the lowest acceptable standards, (which makes perfect sense and is at is should be, btw). This double hit has been the big story in my corner of the construction industry, and while there does seem to be a lot of attention being given to helping get the housing market going again, I don't really see the same being done for remodeling.
Sure, a rebound in housing in general will help the remodeling market, but tax breaks and other incentives targeted toward home remodeling, especially urban remodeling, could help spark a bounce in construction jobs.
There are a lot of reasons an urban remodeling bounceback would be great.

The sheer volume and density of housing stock in the nations cities provides a lot of advantages. Most of the housing stock inside city limits is much older than the stock without, is larger (multi-unit), and holds more people. Updating the energy efficiency of these buildings with insulation, better windows, etc. would make a huge difference to the country's energy consumption and, in the long run "pay for themselves". The large amount of multi-unit buildings makes the process more efficient as well. In places like Brooklyn and Chicago, one renovation project can result in two or three families living in more efficient homes.
Density also means workers travel less far, using less money and energy to get to work. This might seem silly until you work on a construction site in Houston, where some guys are driving an hour to work every day (done that), and then work on a construction site in a city, where many of the workers can just bike there. (done that) This has a lot of side benefits. Workers can have access to work without being on the hook for car payments, gas, insurance, etc. This raises the net effect of the worker's wages.
These are not tract home construction jobs. I've worked with people who had years of tract home experience. They knew alot about a couple things and were terrible remodelers. When you look over a sea of identical houses in a typical suburban development it is easy to see those houses as widgets, and that is exactly how they are built, as widgets, in a factory process where one crew just does the same small part over and over every day. It is efficient, requiring only workers who can be taught one small part of the process, factory style. Remodeling by its very nature requires the constant solving of unique problems. It is a process of discovery, deliberation, compromise, improvisation, customization, customer relations and frustration management. Learning how to go about doing it doesn't just make good carpenters, it can produce good workers with valuable social and intellectual skills they can take into other areas of employment as the economy changes.
The world is going to live here anyway, so it may as well be nice.

"Satan Hates You" DVD Available Today!

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 07:58:29 PDT

(Hey, that's me on the lower left!)

Another one of the micro-budget movies I was a small part of for Monsterpants Movies is finally out now on DVD and available on Amazon. It is not for everyone, but I think if you don't hate it on principle, you'll probably get a kick out of it. There are some really horrifying moments, some hilarious moments, and plenty of gore...pretty much standard fare for Mr. McKenney. Was very glad to be able to work on this and met some amazing horror pros. Check it out!

This Just Occurred to Me.

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 12:01:22 PDT

Was just listening to Terry Gross interview reporter Richard Engel on her radio show,"Fresh Air". During the interview they played a clip from an Engel report from Afghanistan in which a young soldier breaks down and shows his grief at the death of a friend. It is at 2:30 in the video version of Engel's original report, below.

As I was listening to the Sergeant apologize, it occurred to me that we often hear people apologize for becoming overcome with sadness in public, but never hear apologies from people publicly overcome by hate and anger.
I'd never noticed that before, and it seems noteworthy.

Mets Keep Calm

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 06:10:23 PDT

Mets Keep Calm, originally uploaded by mattmorettini.

Season days away....

Doughnuts Away!

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 07:32:55 PST

SO, the drama at Chelsea Hotel finally ended and the Doughnut Plant has opened. I need to do some punch list stuff and take more photos , but here is a slideshow of the basics (if you follow my work blog you've seen these before):

And here is a slideshow of photos of the place on flikr (just realized you can do this), do NOT look if you are hungry. I did the tables the nosing on the banquette and the back bar.

Doughnut Plant’s Chelsea Hotel Location Is Held Up by ‘Drama’

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 15:33:43 PDT

Doughnut Plant’s Chelsea Hotel Location Is Held Up by ‘Drama’

I'm mostly posting this so I'll be sure to remember where it is. I'm designing and building the cafe tables for this place, so I have a vested interest in the story.

Video: Founder of the EFF on the History, Future of the Internet

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 10:36:41 PDT

I like to hear smart people talk. I don't hold their history in the Grateful Dead against them.
John Perry Barlow on the TWIT network.

Los Angeles - Las Vegas Vacation Pics.

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 10:27:26 PDT

Softball Pics

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 04:57:00 PDT

Thanks to Eric for the great pics, as usual. And for continuing to catch every single error I make on camera.
Bastard.

Lighter Notes

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 08:10:06 PDT

The above Very Crude Video was shot with my iphone3 while jogging in Fort Greene Park. In it, a man is playing a piano put in the park as part of the best public art project I think I've ever seen. "Play Me, I'm Yours" is the brainchild of British artist Luke Jerram. He's dropped off pianos in public parks and street corners throughout New York City. I've been biking around Brooklyn alot lately and have been really stunned by the power of this project.
My initial reaction was a completely cynical faith in the pianos bringing out the worst in people. Trashed pianos, an incessant tuneless banging of fists on keys, etc. The reality has been the complete opposite. I have seen these pianos in use many times now, and I've never heard someone who wasn't trying to play something, even if it was a young child reviewing their latest piano lesson. The vast majority of my experiences have been of average people walking by, perhaps with their friends, and stopping to reveal an amazing hidden talent.
The pianos are not perfectly tuned, by any stretch, but watching someone coax a melody out of one is edifying. It instantly draws onlookers, who are suddenly all participating in a connected human moment in the center of a torrid-busy city on what have been scorching hot days. Unexpected things happen, such as the young girl's dorky piano lesson scale studies striking her friends with awe, perhaps changing her whole perspective on the activity. And a normally invisible old man, daily needs in a plastic bag, setting that bag down, addressing the keys and becoming an entertainer, the center of activity in the park.
More, please.

July 4th and Sunday Morning Media

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 10:16:17 PDT

Up early and doing a morning round of the news sites, I've been struck with the fact most of them are running wounded soldier stories on the front page. This put me in the position of confronting my own jingoistic expectations.
Because I am a patriotic American and I want, when I wake up on July 4th, to read on the front pages things that make me proud to be an American and glad to be free of the British. The latter isn't a high priority for our media over here, as 98% of BBC television programming has been doing just fine in that department for years. For every "Monty Python" there are 100 "East Enders". Also, they eat fried blood for breakfast. Snog on that.

I want pro-American fluff this morning. Not even fluff, just mild propaganda. Eagles and fire trucks in bunting. Pictures of families pretending to get along at barbecues in backyards we won't mention are in foreclosure. Profiles of the Founders that sidestep the whole landed gentry slave owner thing. In fact, I'd be okay with placing friendly, professional, pepper-spray-toting guards on Noam Chomsky's door today, at least until around 5pm. (The Zinn household, sadly, may be skipped, this year and forward). That's how ripe for jingoism I am.

But the press let me down today. If anyone was wondering if patriotism had been redefined in this country, turned into a brand so it might do what brands do, serve a master, well, look at what the media believes will make us proud to be Americans.

Wounded soldiers do not make me proud. They should be proud of their service, but I'm not proud of it. Humbled by it, moved by it, yes. Not proud. And that's a shame, because if I was, I'd be in the middle of a great run, the longest war in our young history! Suck it, Orwell, you were right, and guess what, it's awesome, and fulfilling, and imbues life with meaning and you were wrong. But I'm not. Because any country can produce wounded soldiers, and most do. Hey, if looking at wounded soldiers makes you beam with national pride, pack your bags, 'cause you're gonna love the Democratic Republic of the Congo! If we were able to figure out a way to get our foreign policy done without wounding our soldiers, that would be something to crow about.
Don't get me wrong, I am proud of our military in general. I listen to a lot of public radio talk shows while in the shop, chock full of professors, authors, filmakers and the usual Liberal Elite. The most well spoken, composed guests are always young officers from our military. And I'm proud of the way the soldiers comport themselves in ridiculous positions we put them in. The sacrifices our military make are so important, they have their own holiday, a couple, actually. This isn't one of them. Yet, being patriotic in this country has been reduced, on purpose, by a small political elite, to a precious few notes, one of which is Military Worship. Because the act of bowing toward this idol is uncomfortable for the press, we don't see the honest version they do in other countries. Putting convoys of tanks and skies black with Apache helicopters would be too much, and produce angry feedback. But who can complain about stories of brave soldiers with missing limbs? Go with that. The result is flag-draped Amputee Porn. We are not a great country because we have done this to our youth, we are a great country in spite of it.

And we are a great country, and that's what I want to see this morning. I want to see things that make me proud to be an American. Selfish, I know, but true. And it should be easy! There are countless, countless things, beginning with the land itself. At least one channel should just show nothing but HD flyovers of the different geography of the country, all day. I'm proud of that. Which is odd, maybe, but true. That's a no-brainer. Another no-brainer? The world was a hair's breadth away from Nazi domination. We stopped that.
I'm proud of the social progress this country has made in recent history. Of how we don't hide behind "cultural integrity" like they do in Europe and face our problems regarding race and immigration head on and in the open. I'm proud of the good we do around the world.

I'm proud of a lot of things, and those are what I want to see. My personal propaganda wish list.

Me and a Professional Writer!

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 06:11:55 PDT

I suppose it is impossible to have dinner at age 43 with someone you first ate with at age 7 and not think about the trajectories of life and the decisions we make that set those compass points. One of the unconscious decisions I made very, very early on-perhaps over another meal, most likely involving Salisbury Steak and a half pint of chocolate milk-was to have the highest quality friends possible. This has always served me well, and become a central feature of my life, its importance underscored this week, when the first word I'd received in months from a member of my generally estranged family was an automated notice they had unsubscribed to this blog's RSS feed.

I didn't even know I could get those notices.

On days when it becomes clear your family has moved beyond "We're not close" into the realm where deleting unread email updates becomes unsupportable effort, reminders of the family one picks up while plying those trajectories above are welcome. This picture is such a reminder. The chances I would be standing next to Mike this year, that we would even know how to get in touch with each other, were slim enough to render this bizarre, and has required at least two or three pieces of random luck. Of course, he's a newspaper editor and columnist in Dallas now, so he's a bit easier to find, but when his family moved in 4rth grade, I was pretty sure I'd never see him again.
We've had very different lives, set very courses for ourselves, but I was amazed how easy it was to spend time together. Of course, we were still trying to get milk to spew out of each other's nose, but I think thats a sign of...youthful vigor. More importantly, we were able at this age to crack open the code of silence of our Perfect Suburban Youth and compare notes on the worlds of two 7 year-olds that perhaps made a 35+ year bond, however tenuous, inevitable.
So, here's to family portraits.

On a lighter note...Softball at McCarren

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 13:04:35 PDT

Crazy, crazy dust devils included...

The Sweat Cure.

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 19:10:20 PDT

Rope was jumped. Pull ups were done. Squats were sunk into and somehow returned from.
A large amount of sweat hung lazy and heavy between fibers of a poly/cotton blend.
Not the random physical effort of work or even the more calculated risk of effort involved in sports. The premeditated, constant effort of exercise. Purifying. Cathartic.
I'd like to say waited until the last possible day for it to do any good, but as is usually usual, it was probably the day after. Or rather, two days after. If I had started two days ago, I could have avoided yesterday. Maybe.
Yesterday was that day when it just becomes impossible to ignore the fact one is probably somewhere mid-breakdown. Half unraveled. The mental state that can really shake a person...the first 14, 15 times. But experience breeds...what, acceptance? Carelessness?
Sometimes experience just means having one more idea than you had last time, one more thing that might work.
That voice that tells you "Yep, you should probably jump some rope..."

Last Sunday's Softball Game, in Photos.

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Wed, 19 May 2010 05:26:08 PDT

Now that I am on a Facebook hiatus, deciding where to put different things is more of a challenge. Facebook really was more of a one-stop-shop. One fantastic side effect? I now devote about an hour less time per day worrying about political crap I can't do anything about anyway, getting progressively (get it?) more frustrated at the ability of Ideology to trump simple, easily verifiable Fact.

See? It's sucking me back in....
So here are some photos of people playing softball. One of them has a clear addiction to sports gear. Down 7-3 in the middle innings, they came back with a ten run, two out rally in the 7th eventually won. Those of you who have not seen a 7 run, two out rally have not watched a lot of softball...or the Mets defense, POW!

Lesson of the Day: Childhood is Powerful.

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Fri, 14 May 2010 12:58:57 PDT

A bizarre,random event made this morning a very emotional, very crappy morning. The kind of morning that can have one reaching for touchstones by the afternoon; simple, silly reminders of what a privilege it is to be alive and able to experience joy.

The amount of creativity on display in this video is stupefying. And it is amazing to me that the score, over 30 years later, can still pour adrenaline into my bloodstream, even as I watch legos and sandwiches act out the scenes.

Lesson of the day:childhood is powerful.

Star Wars Uncut "The Escape" from Casey Pugh on Vimeo.

Age

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 14:53:30 PDT

A confusion on the occasion of my 43rd birthday:
On the subway platform, waiting for the train to the Mets game, earbuds plugged in and Shuffle bringing up "O Saya", the music accompanying the opening credits chase scene of Slumdog Millionaire. And it is all I can do to keep tears from streaming down my face. Just being reminded of that sequence, and the perfection of the fit with the music and the absolute mastery of the language of cinema the whole package displayed and, and...just how much I fucking love the movies, and the escape, and how much that has meant to me since childhood.

So, the question, am I, on this birthday, becoming a weepy old man? Or enjoying the last gasp of young man's feeling, Art is My Religion?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

A Week Without Socialism

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Fri, 16 Apr 2010 14:26:16 PDT

Dear Glenn, Sarah, etc.;
You may have read my recent post about Altar Chimps. If so, you know I'm an Idea Guy, a Solution Guy.
And have I got one for you.
I know you just had a big Tea Party for Tax Day, congrats. But now what? What can you do to grab the next news cycle?

A National Week Without Socialism!

I know, right? Why didn't anyone think of this before? For one week, all freedom loving people will wake up and go about their day without relying on Big Government and its intrusion into our lives, our families, our very souls!

4am.: Alarm goes off. Up and at em! Grab those bootstraps, it's time to get the little ones ready for work! Fourth and Fifth grade were boring and tilted left by the liberal education elite anyway. During AWWS, Billy and Sally get to throw off the burdensome yoke of child welfare laws and freely pursue their best potential at the local bucket factory.
5am : Check on Grandma and Grandpa and Grandma and Grampa. They're all sharing the kid's room. They moved in for the week. Freed of the regressive Social Security system, they're back as part of the American Family Unit. Now elderly and unable to work, they'll bond closer with Billy and Sally when the kids get back from the bucket factory tonight, knowing they are now dependent on the children's income for food. And Billy and Sally will now get a chance to really get to know them, and the intricacies of their health problems, taking over for the Nanny State's home health aids.
5:30 am: Breakfast. Sure, oatmeal is bland, but after Billy almost died from tainted sausage, it seemed like the wise thing to do.
6am: Take out the trash. Tricked you! Silly reader, there's no taking out the trash, because those sucking-from-the-public-teat garbage collectors won't be around to pick it up! Just burn it, or better yet, do what was good enough for our Founding Fathers and throw it in the front yard! Smells like freedom.
7am: (via Todd Bublitz) I'm off to walk my kids to (expensive private) school (so I don't have to use those public roads). We'll walk across private property and pay each land owner a toll as we go.

So many ideas! Wish I didn't have to go to work. If you have any ideas for the AWWS event, post 'em in the comments or send them to me and I'll add them to the post.

Remember: Freedom Isn't Free, It's Ad Supported.

Thank You, Europe.

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 08:21:54 PDT

This has been a weekend of humiliation, so I'd just like to thank the well dressed European gentlemen and ladies who were eating where I was eating late last night for showing me that as low as I was at that point, after a frenzied day of physical work, I still smelled better than professionals from The Continent.

Henry on the Mend

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 07:59:05 PDT

The above picture would be sad, if it we hadn't just seen him with his belly stitched up a few short weeks ago. It is all perspective, I guess. He whimpers, still, but is alert (for someone with a pain patch and pills) and in fairly good spirits. On Sunday the bandage will come off and I believe........the cone will go on. And that is sad.

How to Get on People's Bad Side

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:37:54 PST

"Go to two."

(NOTE: This was originally titled "How to Suck At Your Job: Indie Film 2nd AD", but in all honesty, I do not know enough to know if this or that member of the production staff is, on whole, doing a bad job. All I can know for sure is how they have done their job as it pertains to me. So, I think things were mishandled, or not handled. I still believe all that, but it is one thing for me to believe it, another for me to splash it as the title of a piece that might come up in a google search for information on the movie. That was probably uncalled for on my part as my problems were not at all personal, just job performance related.)

So as you know if you are reading this, I am currently filming "Hypothermia", a microbudget monster picture (pronounced correctly only as pick'-shah and only if holding a cigar) that takes place on the lake ice of upstate NY. This will be the fifth talkie I've made with Monsterpants, the fourth with Glass Eye Pix and the first with Dark Sky. Each new endeavor has had perhaps in the ballpark of twice the previous budget. I don't know the real numbers, but I know that "Canniballistic" cost about 8-10 grand on McKenney's credit cards and it is public knowledge that the current production is classified by the Screen Actors Guild as an "ultra low budget" affair, which means a cap of around ~~$270,000~~ $200,000. What has become clear is that with more money comes more folks who pay themselves more than you to tell you why you can't afford things. I understand that for many if not most of you, hearing a 42 year old man having this epiphany about middle management is akin to watching him find out about Santa Claus, but bear with me, it'll be more fun in a second when I start burning bridges...

When this production started I recieved a call from James McKenney asking me to be sure and return all production calls asap, as we were now working with pros who mistrusted our ragtag, somebody-get-the-grill-lit-so-it's-hot-by-lunch-and-get-Don's-dog-out-of-the-shot style of making movies and we really needed to step up out game and prove we could play on this next-if incrementally so-level. Turns out he needent have worried, as I was never called, or emailed, until a week before shooting began when I sent out an email cc'ing anyone I had an address for, asking about small details such as "Am I still in the cast?","Where exactly is it shooting?","Where am I staying?" and "How do I get there?"
But that is just me, and I am an actor on this job, and if actors are not treated with disdain, something is wrong. I expected to have the Production Assistant told to drop of a box before he drops me off. I mean, actors, we've earned that disdain over a period of centuries. Actual tens of hundreds of years of vanity, hypochondria and sloth.
Such is not the case for the crew. They work for a living. At jobs that cannot be done with a phone and a laptop. There are quite a few on this film, double what we have ever had. I was impressed by that, by what money had brought, only later would I realize the laptop and phone folks had multiplied by five. These crew are doing a great job, often in actual blizzard conditions. They have made it possible to shoot five, seven pages a day, which may mean something to some of you. I include in this group the PAs, a group that can encompass both seemingly masochistic uberworkers and mouth breathing producer's relatives. This shoot has the former.
Which is why when the conductor on the train I am travelling toward the shoot on announced snow would cause a three hour delay in our travel, I emailed the phone and laptop crowd. Not because I was concerned about making it to the set on time-after all, they put me on a 7am train for a scene that will probably start shooting about midnight- but because even an actor can dig down deep enough to find some tiny modicum of respect for the poor PA who would be sitting at the train station in Amsterdam,NY at the scheduled train arrival time, waiting for both a train that was not coming and the terse "Where the hell are you?!" over their radio that absolutely was coming.
The ending writes itself, of course. Fifteen minutes after my train was supposed to arrive I recieved a nervous call from the sweetest of the PAs wondering, umm, you know, um, just making sure you,um, got on the train okay and um, that it left and everything, you know, cause, um, I'm here at the station.....

Bulldozers, Chain Stores and Amsterdam, New York

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:05:57 PST

I have a day off from filming "Hypothermia" upstate in Amsterdam, New York. May go on a hike through the snow, from our hotel in the vacant detrius of what was once downtown to the Walmart, Ruby Tuesday's, Pizza Hut strip a mile or two up Route 30. I've loved the character of these small eastern manufacturing cities/towns since I first saw them as a young man. To see them on their way to being scraped from existence by the bulldozer's blade is sad. The homes have Victorian bones, the red brick factories are sized for sensible businesses. Makers of glass window panes, shoes, door locks. Three, four stories tall, twenty, thirty windows long, twelve wide.
Thirty years ago (more? less?) any kid in town could ride his bike to the house of the family who owned one of these businesses, or stand behind them in line for the movies.

That family was the most successful in town, and probably quite happy with that. "The Wealthiest Man in My Hometown" sounds laughably underachieving these days. Only an imbecile would waste time and energy building a manufacturing business when they could be importing those items and building a brand, right? Who cares about sponsoring the local teeball team when that money could be spent raising your social media profile, potentially seen by billions? And those actions don't need to take place in an often cold, snow battered place like Amsterdam, NY.

There is really no reason for money to come here. Businesses do, as evidenced by the strip out on Route 30, I imagine a result of tax deals so lopsided as to challenge their name, but those businesses are not wealth creating busineses. Haven't we learned? Those chain restaurants, those same twenty stores you see in these Anywhere, USA shopping strips, they are wealth extraction machines. And when their job is done, they will shut down, and the bulldozers from here in old downtown Amsterdam will move up Route 30 and scrape them away too.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Another Holiday Food Piece

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 07:51:02 PST

The foodstuff above was made in my house last night. Well, last night through this morning, as our New York apartment-sized freezer would not accommodate a cookie sheet, leaving us at the mercy of our back patio, Mother Nature and Old Man Winter, all of whom came through with freezing colors. The concoction is known as Brickle, I understand, and was one of many holiday cookies featured recently in the New York Times.
I didn't really know at first what the Holiday part of the food was. It is not covered with a dusting of white powdered sugar or iced into representations of Holiday Icons. It wasn't until the preparation started that I got it.
(Now, I know at least one person who reads this blog and is under the age of 30. For any of you fresh faced folks, the following may not hold true. I would apologize, but I envy your youth with a deep and turgid malevolence which makes that impossible. So there.)

I sat across the kitchen island and watched a cookie sheet come out of the cabinet and be covered in foil. Always a good sign. Sleeves of saltines were opened and spread over the foil. Soon, crippling amounts of sugar and butter were being folded together in a saucepan.
You holiday had me at "cover the cookie sheet with foil".
It hit me. The end product does not represent The Holidays, the process is The Holidays. A ritual in the physical world providing a doorway we can walk through into a memory of the spirit. A kitchen warmed by a pre-heating oven. The microthunder clatter of cookie sheets wrested from between pot lids. Clunking cabinet doors and flat surfaces covered with ingredients once the pride of Food Science: Crisco. Saltines. Nestle Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips. White Bread and Brown Sugar, working hand in hand! A world of fresh forever foodstuffs in earth tones only please, for we've invented Food Coloring at no small expense and it will not gather dust in the pantry. Not on this watch.
And butter.
Oh, the butter. November 20th perhaps is the date beyond which it is bad form to measure butter by the tablespoon. One stick. That is where the miserly may begin.
The sounds, the scents, the vista of plenty, the feeling of a warm kitchen, if only because we believe these to be the sensory input of remembered moments of family bonds and good tidings, they are. A cultural memory to reinforce the personal. To replace it, if need be. I suppose therein lies the usefulness, if not the beauty of Tradition; timeless, it is never too late to join in, never too forgotten to revisit.

I should add that upon tasting them this morning, I didn't even particularly like the finished product. Part of that is probably expectation. I was expecting a cookie experience and this is a bit more like a candy. Verrrrrry sweet. Probably great with black coffee after a meal.
Speaking of meals, I will also add, for those of you thinking I was just sitting around drinking wine and watching the wife make cookies....which I was...that I produced the dinner part of the evening: the good, if awkwardly named Chicken Breasts Provencal from epicurious.com, a site which keeps coming through for me.

And Suddenly, Google Seems Dangerous.

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 13:57:52 PST

Show of hands, who here uses Google? That's what I thought. This blog is a Google product. I use Gmail, Google Analytics and a whole host of other Google products from time to time. And I know they keep track of everything I do inside their web space, in some manner. But I always figured it was in a pretty meta, big picture way. So hearing this from their CEO is more than a little creepy.

Really? The old, 'if you're not doing anything wrong, you've got nothing to worry about' line? Why not just slide a manila folder across the table, offer us a smoke, lean back and hook your thumbs into the straps of your shoulder holster?
Relax. We just want to clear a few things up... You need somethin'? A soda? Coffee? Lou, get the kid a soda.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (fighting the battles we don't know we're losing) has a nice piece about this on their site. I'll steal a bit of it:

In response to Schmidt, Security researcher Bruce Schneier referenced an eloquent piece he wrote in 2006 that makes the case that "[p]rivacy is an inherent human right, and a requirement for maintaining the human condition with dignity and respect." Schneier writes:

For if we are observed in all matters, we are constantly under threat of correction, judgment, criticism, even plagiarism of our own uniqueness. We become children, fettered under watchful eyes, constantly fearful that -- either now or in the uncertain future -- patterns we leave behind will be brought back to implicate us, by whatever authority has now become focused upon our once-private and innocent acts. We lose our individuality, because everything we do is observable and recordable.

Gawker was quick to point out the personal hypocrisy of Schmidt's dismissive stance, noting that for about a year, Schmidt blacklisted CNET reporters from Google after the tech news company published an article with information about his salary, neighborhood, hobbies, and political donations -- all obtained from Google searches. Techdirt noted additionally that Schmidt's statement is painfully similar to the tired adage of pro-surveillance advocates that incorrectly presume that privacy's only function is to obscure lawbreaking: "If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to worry about."

There's also a great quote from Corey Doctorow over there, so check it out.

Also, poke around your Google settings and decide if you want them to save every last thing you've typed into their search engine for the last five years. Because they have that. Also, check your Facebook privacy settings. They've changed some stuff over there and it ain't all good.

Taking A News Vacation

don@donwoodonline.com (Don Wood) — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 08:34:58 PST

photo from guenterleitenbauer on flikr.

"Putting your head in the sand" is a pejorative. But what if your head is on fire? All of a sudden, it makes some sense.
Especially if it is a grease fire.
Say, you were chain smoking while bobbing for fries and somehow that went sideways. Putting your head in the sand would probably be the smartest thing you did that day.

But I digress.
I am going to put my head in the sand for a few days, in the interests of self preservation, or rather, sanity preservation. Normally I like to keep up on things. When my computer fires up in the morning, it automatically loads the New York Times, The Gothamist, The New York Times Local blog about my nieghborhood , and of course, Facebook, where my friends and I post a lot of links to news stories, in case you haven't noticed. Then I go to work and listen to NPR for a good portion of the day.

I am fairly well-versed on the news of the day. It has not served me well.
I have written my representatives a few times in the last couple months, which makes me feel like a more responsible member of society, but other than that....

What has the news done for me?

I guess this feeling started when I started ranting about my relationship with social media in the last podcast. Once you step back and think about what you are putting your time into, and what you are getting out of it, you can really shock yourself. This latest thought about the news emerged over the last week or so, as my news immersion got me thinking about the Dark Ages, and about a New Dark Ages. I've been rolling a blog post around in my head trying to get it into some sort of shape. The idea being the Darkness of those Ages was not imposed, but embraced, invented. The knowledge, the science, the information was there, they just decided they'd go all Bartleby the Scrivner and...prefer not to.
And recently I'm reading the news and wondering if Bartleby is back. If you had asked me at 20 years-old if people's trust in Science, generally, would halve in my lifetime, I'd have said no. I've just seen it nearly halve in 2 years. If you had asked me if more or less people would believe in evolution, I would have said more. I would have been wrong.

But that, and health care, and civil rights and an almost surrealist level of local political corruption has just brought me to the point where I literally dropped my head onto my desk at the shop yesterday and just stayed that way for a full minute. And why? To what end?
Zip.
So, sorry news, it's not you, it's me, but I need some space. I think it would be a good idea to see other media.
Sound familiar? Here are some items I use to fill that media gap while on a news vacation:
NPR Science Friday.
Robert Llewellyn's Carpool.
TED Talks.
Philosophy Bites.
Security Now.
This Week in Tech. (news, but tech news)
Stuff You Should Know.
Etsy. (People creating! Making things!)
There I Fixed It. (People creating, making things...that they probably shouldn't. A testament to the indomitable human spirit. My only reservation is that it sometimes gets snarky, and I try to avoid snark during these breaks.)

So that's a start. And hey, if you feel like commenting, please do so, and do so below. This Disqus software is suppose to allow threading, etc. and I was kind of hoping it would encourage some of the old DWO forum discussion, as the spambots beat me into submission and led to me shutting it down. Also, I am trying to bust out of all my online communication passing through Facebook.