Simon – Page 55 – Ephemerality

September 15, 2018July 18, 2023

The Time Has Come

I went through a phase in my youth where I was obsessed with clocks. Something about the sophistication of mechanical engineering to such an exactness so as to measure time accurately was just fascinating. Beauty can indeed be defined through such means, like the way I appreciate a fine knife for its design and metallurgy long after it’s been scratched and resharpened into what so many others view as a simple chuck of cutting steel. It’s why I went through a lockpicking phase–timeless engineering that has only been marginally improved upon. Analog perfection.

I never quite grew out of that phase.

In the Lubbock years, one of dad’s colleagues had a grandfather clock. It was bizarredly contrasted to the lime-green shag carpeting which traversed the entire house, but even that could be overlooked when in the presence of such a masterpiece. It was a dark reddish wood, perhaps mahogany, with the typical polished bronze components. Its quarter-hour chimes punctuated the evenings with delicate reminders of time’s passage without being jarring. The chimes, I would only recently discover, were the Westminster quarters.

Since then, I had always been on the lookout for such a clock to call my own, but transient residences and limited finances prohibited such an investment. Finances still do, as a true grandfather clock today runs well into the thousands. But on occasion, I would see them in antique stores and would be reminded of the fantasy. The ones in these stores were markedly smaller and cheaper than what I remembered too, and labeled with dubious claims like “It still works”, despite not actually having been wound recently, and “As-is, no returns”. Conditions such as these are why my next car will not be pre-owned.

Then a neighbor had an estate sale. Liz snapped a photo of such a clock and asked if I wanted it–for a modest $75. Turns out it was a grandmother clock–a smaller variant, and term with which I was unfamiliar. But, it had been maintained by The Village Elder, so its mechanics were guaranteed from a reliable source. I confirmed the purchase, and with the help of The Village Elder, it was waiting for me in the dining room when I got home. Whatever it’s called officially, it’s still a satisfying 6 feet, and while being of a laminated wood, looks as nice as any well-made laminated furniture. And the price couldn’t be beat.

But of course I couldn’t let it go as a simple aesthetic accent for the room. I needed to know its origin.

So I opened the clock and looked for identifying marks. I found 2:

And so the internet search began!

The metal plate revealed that the clock had been made by Colonial Manufacturing–a company based in Zeeland, MI; and a company that had apparently gone out of business in 1983¹.

Further digging led me to a clock specialists’ forum, which claimed that the catalogs didn’t exist in any readily-available digital form, but the metal stamps weren’t introduced until the 1970s². This backed the claim of clocks I had seen previously in the antique stores, which were labeled as from the 70s. Also, the veneer is thick, and modern stranded board is from the early 1980s, so while not definitive, it would appear logical to conclude the type of veneer to be a direct predecessor, so again–1970s.

Is a far cry from the ominous chronographic sentinel of my memories, but it’s a very lovely timepiece nonetheless. And its chimes are the same. Liz too has distinct memories of that sound. Perhaps it will be good for the kid–to give her a sense of how fleeting time really is. Eternal time, measured in quarter hours. Tempus Fugit indeed.

–Simon

¹http://www.furniturecityhistory.org/company/3447/colonial-manufacturing-co
²https://mb.nawcc.org

September 10, 2018July 18, 2023

Sometimes the Strong Don’t Eat

Or maybe we’re weak.

This year’s squirrel hunting wasn’t so successful, so I have no epic tales of glorious battle to recount.

But we did spot an epic mushroom. And I just so happened to remember seeing one of these before on a hunting trip.

That was 6 years ago. Apparently it made an impression on me. Mushrooms are cool. and creepy.

–Simon

September 7, 2018

Social Studies

When I look back on my early education years, I reflect on certain words and phrases. These combinations have entered public lexicon, and no one seems to question them later. “Whole Language” was one of them. Apparently I learned to write during this trend, and was taught how to represent concepts rather than accurate spelling and syntax. Spelling developed later through simple writing practice, though in the days preceding spellcheck, I didn’t get the immediate feedback, so I was slow to adapt.

But the big one to me, being the historian, is the term “Social Studies”. Taken at face value without the personal experiences within the American educational system, the term sounds like preparatory education for public sector work. But what is it really?

Naturally, I consulted Wikipedia:

“…created to consolidate and standardize various subjects which did not fit within normal school curricula”

The wording of that statement seems almost presumptuous, but I didn’t feel like reading the 63-page government document that outlined the program, so I’ll take the summary at face value. Assuming it’s accurate, 19th-century education apparently didn’t incorporate the broad spectrum of social studies: history, geography, and political science. And rather than cover each discipline, they were all thrown into a big pot and given a common name.

The problem, in my opinion, was that as schools organized subjects based on time blocks, all of these disciplines were allotted only a shared time–50 minutes, in my own experience. So for 50 minutes a day, I was expected to learn humanities and social sciences.

And this is where I’ll note that physical education was a double-blocked class.

And physical education is a misnomer–the class was football education. So for 2 hours a day in my youth I learned how to play football, and was given half the time to study all of the humanities and social sciences.

And social studies is also a misnomer, because the curriculum of this class was entirely comprised of Texas history. So for the majority of my adolescence, I learned football and Texas history.

I don’t suppose that my Texan upbringing was a common experience outside of that educational system, but why do we continue to group things like this? Is there some reason the various social sciences can’t be addressed individually? Then again, science classes were all grouped together too. I guess when we’re young, we’re just thrown information in the hopes that it will build foundations as prerequisites for more delineated disciplines later?

Just one of many questions I posit for my successors.

–Simon

August 29, 2018July 18, 2023

One Door Leads to Certain Doom

Well, maybe not doom, but the usual mix of anger and irritation.

Liz wanted a storm door on the front, as she had long complained about the lack of airflow north to south through the house, which is mostly because there’s no south-facing window (aside from the bedrooms). So, in theory, the front door could be left open to aid this pneumatic conundrum were a screen to be installed there.

I liked the look of our front door, as it sported a rather medieval type of aged bronze handle upon dark maroon paint, so I was reluctant to hide that behind my outdated vision of a screen door: the Lubbock house’s back door–an exposed aluminum frame with a screen that was always torn and popping out.

But there have been some design updates in the last 20 years, and the modern iterations are coated aluminum with hybrid glass/screens. They also mount into frames with enough clearance so as to avoid doorknob complications, and they can accommodate the ever so important seasonal wreath which hangs from the main door.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t as straightforward as IKEA furniture. In fact, depending on its desired orientation, the screw holes had to be manually drilled out first. This process required some spacial orientation, and therefore concentration, to do correctly. But at this critical moment, Poppy attacked the mailman, and after I corralled the whippet any such concentration was shot, and of course I drilled out the wrong side. Sigh. At least the holes are small.

I also had to drill out rather large holes to attach the doorknob and deadbolt, during which the battery in my drill went dead, so the project experienced a rather unfortunate delay.

And there was no gentle way to drill out 3/4 inch holes in plate aluminum

But alas! We now have a storm/screen door. I admit that it does look nice, and it’s convenient to use it throughout the day instead of the large wood door–mostly because the kid either slams it, or won’t close it at all.

As to whether or not it helps with ventilation–I don’t know yet, because since I installed it it’s been about 90 out and humid. Ohio weather (kind of makes me wonder again why we bothered with this).

I’ll just be content in that it looks nice.

–Simon

August 24, 2018July 18, 2023

Generational Technology

I was talking to my father, as I tend to do, and as what usually happens when I engage in such discourse, especially whilst imbibing, I acquired certain information from a specific point of view and found it interesting. And so, a blog post is born.

We were discussing technology and the inevitable variances by which the differing generations adapt to it. It’s cliché, certainly, to envision some old geezer hammering away at a keyboard and yelling at a computer monitor. For many years, in fact, I provided customer service to such people who couldn’t figure out the difference between a browser’s search menu and address bar–possibly why so many modern browsers have now dealt away with the differentiation altogether.

Of course, I knew the stereotype to be a half truth, and I considered my own father a model example to the contrary. Dad, a professor, had a history of spending his research grant money on computer equipment, and in fact I, as a child, had been quite enamored by his laboratory on campus. I willingly accompanied him into work during those summer days of my youth for the sole reason of gaining access to the banks of computers which lined the old slate countertops of those musty rooms. And, by observation and from rudimentary instruction, taught myself how to type properly on a modern QWERTY keyboard–years before keyboarding was introduced into gradeschool curriculum.

Many years prior, Dad had typed up his doctoral dissertation on an electric typewriter. And now, while I still can’t hope to capture even his most basic interest in networking technology and infosec, still see the man using modern hardware beyond a simple intuitive ease, but with something approaching mild obsession. In short–he’s entirely comfortable with modern technology. And this is a man who has no connective tissue in his leg to speak of (he’s old).

And during this particular discussion, he was musing over his students’ inability to use basic computing equipment. A particular anecdote involved his class sending him email invites to subscribe to Office 365 (a rant for another time), so that he might log in and view their term papers digitally. Basically, his students sent him friend requests to a digital subscription service to view their shared documents…rather than use a printer.

Of course, I have written about the evil contrivances we call “printers”, but that’s besides the point.

But anyway, Dad told me this story because he had been approached for his thoughts on how his aging generation anticipates adapting to our world of rapidly-changing technology, to which he responded that the youngest generation doesn’t know anything about using current technology, and so such concerns were misguided.

As a point of comparison, I thought about young drivers and realized that the youngest generation doesn’t know how to operate motor vehicles properly. But then again, neither do most people…and most people don’t really know how to effectively use modern operating systems, or we wouldn’t have Windows 10.

Sooo, I guess my point is that expectations are higher than reality and generational gaps have nothing to do with an individual’s ability to learn and adapt…to a point. I mean, old people still need to stop driving, but I also don’t think most people are competent enough to handle the responsibilities of the Internet either. Hmm–a conundrum.

–Simon