News of the Week
May. 1st, 2020 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rinueWatched True Stories for the first time, finally. It felt very much like like where I grew up, in attitude and time as well as landscape, because it is. That's my mall. I recognized a high school teacher of mine from the back of his head in a seconds-long clip in a montage. (I checked the credits and I'm right.) Credit presumably goes to screenwriter Stephen Tobolowsky, who is from my neighborhood of origin.
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Figured out how to twerk. Given my lifestyle, this is unlikely to ever be useful. But it's been perplexing me for years - I could not work out the biomechanics. It's like knowing a magician is palming a coin but never being able to see how, even up close. What muscles do what? Now I get it. Someone on a message board said it was simple like hula hooping, and somehow that made me understand even though it's a different movement. Now I can do it. I can throw my butt around.
--
I tried and failed to watch the Parks and Rec quarantine special on the night it aired but a few hours later (since I was at work until later than it aired). I didn't record it because supposedly it would be available for streaming. NBC made it so difficult to find the page that told me it wasn't up yet that I had to change the battery in the cable remote due to excessive clicking, and by the end of the process had a toothpick clenched between my teeth - and I don't know where the toothpick came from. I was finally able to watch it a day later on a different device, which was anticlimactic compared to my new ability to manifest toothpicks.
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Inspired by various feel-good news stories, people associated with the high school did a quarantine car parade around town today to celebrate the graduating seniors whose diploma ceremony is cancelled. So at around 2 p.m., and thankfully while I was off air, a whole bunch of honking cars drove by my house. Had this been the South, the cars would have had balloons and streamers, and celebratory messages written on the vehicles' exteriors with soap or shoe polish, and the people inside the cars would have worn boas and party hats. However, since it is Massachusetts, the cars were not decorated at all, nor were the people inside them, and pretty much all of it was shades of gray and stern expressions.
I had to actively turn off my interpretive filmmaker brain which gives images and sounds meaning, because that part of my brain was very clear that the semiotic content of the gray procession was terrified abandoned people blaring "I exist," the emotional message of a newborn crying when it can't sense its mother. I had to switch into my social scientist framework instead and remember that these are people who desire color and celebration but are intimidated by it, as evidenced by the number of fabulous party clothes I am forever buying for nothing at the secondhand store with tags still on, because people here want to be the person who will wear these clothes, but then chicken out. I'm proud of them for taking this step toward exuberance.
--
During breaks at work, particularly during the minutes between when I do a connection test and when I start captioning, I've been gradually stabilizing the antique quilt I keep on the daybed in my office. It's an unusual quilt in ways that aren't obvious until you get close to it. From a few feet away, it looks like simple country-style butterflies faded by time. But from close up, a lot of the "fading" is deliberate use of negative space in the embroidery, and the use of sheer or semi-sheer fabrics - nylons, rayons, cheesecloth. Many of the pieces are floated over each other using a lace edge stitch instead of a seam.
That's the main thing I'm slowly replacing or reinforcing - the black thread used for the borders has disintegrated over time in a way the other fabrics and threads have mostly not. (There are a few exceptions where I'll need to replace a piece of fabric that's torn loose and been lost, entirely or partially.) So far, I've repaired about one and a half panels out of 20. Some of what slows me down is trying to invisibly reinforce the remaining black thread instead of pulling it out and replacing it. I can work faster in the places where it's clearly beyond saving and I can quickly move forward with a facsimile. Still, preservation is preservation, and it means keeping what can be kept.
[Edited to add: The quilt was made by my mother's father's mother, who we call Mamaw. She was very modern and forward-thinking. Our best guess is that it dates back to the 30s or early 40s. Some of the fabrics weren't invented much before then, and wouldn't have broken down as much if it was made much later.]
--
Figured out how to twerk. Given my lifestyle, this is unlikely to ever be useful. But it's been perplexing me for years - I could not work out the biomechanics. It's like knowing a magician is palming a coin but never being able to see how, even up close. What muscles do what? Now I get it. Someone on a message board said it was simple like hula hooping, and somehow that made me understand even though it's a different movement. Now I can do it. I can throw my butt around.
--
I tried and failed to watch the Parks and Rec quarantine special on the night it aired but a few hours later (since I was at work until later than it aired). I didn't record it because supposedly it would be available for streaming. NBC made it so difficult to find the page that told me it wasn't up yet that I had to change the battery in the cable remote due to excessive clicking, and by the end of the process had a toothpick clenched between my teeth - and I don't know where the toothpick came from. I was finally able to watch it a day later on a different device, which was anticlimactic compared to my new ability to manifest toothpicks.
--
Inspired by various feel-good news stories, people associated with the high school did a quarantine car parade around town today to celebrate the graduating seniors whose diploma ceremony is cancelled. So at around 2 p.m., and thankfully while I was off air, a whole bunch of honking cars drove by my house. Had this been the South, the cars would have had balloons and streamers, and celebratory messages written on the vehicles' exteriors with soap or shoe polish, and the people inside the cars would have worn boas and party hats. However, since it is Massachusetts, the cars were not decorated at all, nor were the people inside them, and pretty much all of it was shades of gray and stern expressions.
I had to actively turn off my interpretive filmmaker brain which gives images and sounds meaning, because that part of my brain was very clear that the semiotic content of the gray procession was terrified abandoned people blaring "I exist," the emotional message of a newborn crying when it can't sense its mother. I had to switch into my social scientist framework instead and remember that these are people who desire color and celebration but are intimidated by it, as evidenced by the number of fabulous party clothes I am forever buying for nothing at the secondhand store with tags still on, because people here want to be the person who will wear these clothes, but then chicken out. I'm proud of them for taking this step toward exuberance.
--
During breaks at work, particularly during the minutes between when I do a connection test and when I start captioning, I've been gradually stabilizing the antique quilt I keep on the daybed in my office. It's an unusual quilt in ways that aren't obvious until you get close to it. From a few feet away, it looks like simple country-style butterflies faded by time. But from close up, a lot of the "fading" is deliberate use of negative space in the embroidery, and the use of sheer or semi-sheer fabrics - nylons, rayons, cheesecloth. Many of the pieces are floated over each other using a lace edge stitch instead of a seam.
That's the main thing I'm slowly replacing or reinforcing - the black thread used for the borders has disintegrated over time in a way the other fabrics and threads have mostly not. (There are a few exceptions where I'll need to replace a piece of fabric that's torn loose and been lost, entirely or partially.) So far, I've repaired about one and a half panels out of 20. Some of what slows me down is trying to invisibly reinforce the remaining black thread instead of pulling it out and replacing it. I can work faster in the places where it's clearly beyond saving and I can quickly move forward with a facsimile. Still, preservation is preservation, and it means keeping what can be kept.
[Edited to add: The quilt was made by my mother's father's mother, who we call Mamaw. She was very modern and forward-thinking. Our best guess is that it dates back to the 30s or early 40s. Some of the fabrics weren't invented much before then, and wouldn't have broken down as much if it was made much later.]
