Monday Meanderings 1.30.2017

Interesting problem at the Learning Ally Studio the other day. When we record, we do so in booths constructed with thick double walls packed with sound absorbent material. If you have ever been to an audiologist, you likely were tested in the exact same type booth as we use, made by the Acoustic Systems company.

The doors to these booths are rather large and they weigh nearly 200 pounds. They are supported by massive hinges, and fit very snugly in the opening. And if one of the hinges should happen to break - say the bottom one - the door sort of wedges into the opening, and the poor reader inside can't get outside. I wasn't present when this happened, but I'm told there were a few panicky moments until several strong backs were able to lever the door open.

Crisis averted, the staff began puzzling over how to repair the door. The booths we use were obtained (surplus) in the '70's and parts might be hard to come by nearly 50 years later. BUT - it turns out that Acoustic Systems is now part of a company head-quartered in Cedar Park - a suburb of Austin. "Why yes, remarkably, we do have a few of those old hinges left. Our technician will be right out to replace it."

Heinz Foods is campaigning to have the Monday after Super Bowl declared a national holiday. I thought that a great idea, and spoke up in favor of it - to which my wife said, "Says he who has a holiday everyday." Hm. Well, yes. Never mind.

I was driving at the time and unable to get a photo, but on Monday, January 23, I passed a large Bradford Pear tree in full, gorgeous bloom. Beautiful, if a trifle early.

Well, the clock and I have called a truce. I have agreed to not wind it and it has agreed to stop chiming. That's about as good as it gets until I can get it in to be cleaned and refurbished.  I have to admit, it's a lot more peaceful around our house. Maybe I should just display it as a conversation piece and let it chime for special occasions. Like New Years. Or in celebration of St. Swithun's day.

Monday Meanderings - 1.23.2017

The grand clock adventure continues. I have the older-than-me mantle clock keeping good time at this point. And the Westminster chimes are right on. But striking the hour correctly seems to be more than it can handle. Most of the time, the lower-numbered hours are right - for example three o'clock is almost always right - but not always; sometimes it strikes only once at that hour. And the higher numbers are simply not in reach. The clock gives up after striking 8, sometimes 9 times for the 9-12 range.

And I have decided that winding my 8-day clock on a 1-day schedule seems to work best. There is a betting pool at our household now for just how long I will patiently maintain the running of the clock. Does anyone want in on that action?

TXDOT has been asking for public input for clever, but meaningful text that will fit on those temporary lighted signs by the roadside. The current top vote-getter is a message for cars to merge into one lane with a sign reading "Alright, alright, alright." That may be more meaningful to Austinites than to others.

I am aware that privacy on the Internet is an illusion, but that was really brought home to me the other day when I downloaded a banking app for a locally-owned bank where I keep a small fund to use with a debit card.

I logged in with the proper credentials and got a response that said, "Welcome - we need to know just a little bit more about you to prove that you are really you" and there followed a series of questions, like "What year is your Toyota Highlander?" I don't remember the progression, but each question became a bit more puzzling - as in, where did they get the data for that question? I sure didn't give it to them when I opened the account.

But the final question really caught my attention. It was, "In what city is the following street located?" and listed "N. Davis" and several city choices (including Arlington, TX - the right answer).
My son knows the answer to this question as well, because he interned at the church located on North Davis in Arlington, TX in his college days. And while I have had other associations with that church on North Davis over the years, I'm pretty sure the link between me and my little bank account in Cameron Texas goes through Rob and his internship, and when you think about it, that's a pretty scary thing.

Monday Meanderings - 1.16.2017

We begin with late-breaking news hot off the neighborhood news feed:

Urgent Alert
Keep an eye out for suspicious man in orange shirt picking up pecans. No underwear and pants below his knees.

I should point out that this does not describe our Vietnamese lady who diligently picked up pecans all over the neighborhood this season. And I might add that I doubt this guy is going to be able to outrun the cops.

Can't remember which holiday we are celebrating today, but grateful that I don't have to go to work today. Oh, wait! Bwahhaahaa!

Following up on the clock story from last Wednesday; what is billed as an 8 day clock - as in needs winding every 8 days - is turning out to be more nearly a 4 day clock. Why, yes. It does need cleaning.

And I finally was able to find a key with a very skinny barrel - small enough to fit the tiny hole that allows the clock to be adjusted for fast/slow time-keeping. Previously losing about 5 minutes a day (see cleaning, above) I am slowly bringing it into a more accurate "beat." It's a slow process. You make tiny adjustments and then wait a half-day or more to see what difference you have made.

I mentioned that a chime every 15 minutes has made me acutely conscious of the passing of time; trying to regulate the clock has made me paranoid about the accuracy of all the clocks in the house. I keep checking them in relation to the time on my phone (which is accurate to the micro-second) and find them all wanting. Or over-achieving.

We could discuss discuss the weather over the past week, but hey - a 19 to 82 degree swing is just so Texas, there's not much else to say about it.

Neighboring Leander Police Department used Facebook recently to “introduce” followers to a “red and white sign that says ‘STOP' and helpfully defines the word “stop” as to “cease all movement.”

The post also encourages citizens to ask questions “if you are confused on how to handle an encounter with these signs,” or else officers will “introduce” themselves to you and help clarify. I'm sure that if they ever erect any such signs in Austin we might need such basic instruction as well.

Tempus Fugit

From my earliest memory, there was a chiming mantelpiece clock in my boyhood home. It played the traditional Westminister chimes, starting with a 4-note chord on the quarter hour, adding additional 4-note chords on the half and three-quarters hour, and finally playing the full, famous 16-note melody on each hour, followed by a sonorous tolling for each hour measured.  Specifically, it was a Seth Thomas tambour-style mantel clock with the No. 124 Westminster chime movement. 

When my parents moved to a retirement village, the clock went home with my sister. She recently moved to a smaller apartment, so (lacking a mantle) the clock is sitting on a shelf in my office at this time. 

The provenance of the clock is somewhat murky; my sister has a vague recollection that it belonged to a neighbor woman who was going to be gone for a lengthy period. The woman never asked for the clock back and my father finally paid her $40 for it – a princely sum in that day, equal to $550 today. Or perhaps the clock came to us in another manner. It doesn't matter.

It came to live with us sometime in the latter part of the 1930s. A clue is on the Guarantee and Directions page tacked inside the rear door. It states at the bottom that the Seth Thomas Clock company was a division of General Time Instruments Corporation - a business arrangement that existed only from 1936 to 1949, so the clock can be at most 81 years old.

The Seth Thomas Clock Company began producing clocks in 1813, and for the next 167 years was famous for its long-case clocks as well as mantel, wall, and table-top clocks. It was also well known for the giant clocks they installed in many public buildings, like the 4-dial clock installed on the information kiosk in Grand Central Terminal in 1913. and the Fireman's Hall clock in New York. 

 The notable thing about our clock is that it chimes. Every. Quarter. Hour. And. Every. Hour. Growing up with this clock, we got used to the chiming and paid it no attention. Not so, those family members and friends who came to visit and stay overnight. I recall several guests saying, “I heard that clock every time it chimed – all night long!” 

On occasion, my father would actually stop the clock in honor of some sleepless guest, the only way the chiming could be completely silenced. And it ticks. Loudly, at a frenetic pace of 180 ticks a minute! My Grandmother Bramblett, however, loved listening to the clock, I'm told. She even worked out the notes of the chimes. 

An interesting phenomenon of that chime was that it persisted in my memory for several years after I went off to college. In quiet moments, I would hear the chimes in my head – usually at exactly the right time! 

The clock needs some professional attention at this point. The case, glass bezel and face should be refurbished, and the mechanism needs to be cleaned and oiled by a conservator. It still runs – though it loses time at a steady clip and stops when I forget to wind it (duh!). It still performs the full repertoire of the Westminister chime set, but strikes the hour very lightly, if at all. Perhaps that's a small favor. 

Nostalgia can be expensive, however (in this case from $300 to $1,200 depending on the amount of restoration done), and not everyone in the family is thrilled with the incessant chiming anyway, so it may stay in its present condition. Whether it continues to chime, however, is still being discussed. I will say that a chime every 15 minutes really makes you notice how rapidly time flies! Tempus Fugit!

Of course, I insist that I share the joy with you. Click on the movie below to watch and hear the hour chime (with Blogger you have to use a 3rd-party movie player, so you may see some links to other videos at the end. Just ignore them, especially if they are embarrassing!). 

Monday Meanderings - 1.9.2017

The weekend was an affirmation of why we choose to live in the south. Brrrr! Although the cold is a good excuse to stay in one's pajamas all day. Not that I really need an excuse.

A friend sent me a note the other day. The headline said "Self-Driving Cars Will Make Organ Shortages Even Worse"And the article went on to explain that "the oncoming fleet of driverless cars will change the way we live—remaking us all into passengers, rewiring our economy, retooling our views of ownership, and reshaping our cities and roads."

It will also significantly reduce the number of people killed in auto accidents, since some 94% of auto accidents are caused by driver error. Since auto accidents are among the most reliable sources for healthy organs and tissues experts predict already serious shortages will become greatly compounded. I guess that's a good news/bad news scenario, isn't it?

And I guess that I'm amazed that this didn't happen in Austin -
RICHMOND,VA.— Police say shoppers were mystified and alarmed when two young men wearing Donald Trump masks began boxing one another inside a Lowe’s store in Virginia on New Year’s Eve. Officers were summoned to the store Saturday afternoon because of a “disorderly display that scared customers.” 

Henrico police have said little about the incident. However, 59-year-old witness Michael Willis told the newspaper he saw the men hitting each other while yelling, “Donald Trump! Donald Trump!” The men fell and knocked down merchandise in the process, Willis said.

I have more evidence for my theory that parking garages play a large part in the "Missing Elderly" notices. You may remember that I posit that drivers of my generation enter a parking garage from street 'A,' circle around endlessly hunting for a place to park, circle even more on the way out and exit on street 'B.' The next thing you know we are in Lawton, Oklahoma, looking for a familiar landmark and our vehicle is on a TXDOT signboard.

My new evidence occurred the other day when I entered the parking garage that I frequent when visiting any of 3 of my doctors. I was healthily taking the stairs down to the street level when a door to the stair well opened and a man  peeked in and asked, "Are you familiar with this building?"

I responded that I had been there often, and how could I help?" He wanted to know "where Suite 310 was?" He had looked all over the place and was totally confused. I pointed out that the building with the office suites was actually across the street, and he would find suite 310  over there.

I'm pretty sure that man was in Lawton before the day was over.

I have begun checking books for Learning Ally, as well as reading them. It is something I can do from home; listen to what has been recorded on a project and mark those places in the file where there is a deviation from the text, or a mispronunciation. As much as it pains me to say, all the readers (and, yes, I include myself) make mistakes no matter how hard we try. It's the checker's job to listen and catch these glitches, and for many books it's booorrriiinngg!

However, over the holidays, I checked a book entitled "Charlie Bone and the Time Twister" by Jenny Nimmo. One of a series, it is a Harry Potter-like book that takes place in England of course. We have a reader, Graham Duncan, who was born in the UK, and he reads with a delightful English accent and pronunciation and he read this particular book - and I loved listening to him. Graham can handle all the "voices" in a book such as this with ease and flare.

In addition to this book, Graham recently did a marathon reading of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child to make it available to our clients less than a month after its publication date. They made a short video about that when the book was finished, and I share it here, so you can get a taste of what I enjoyed.

Should Old Acquaintance be Forgot...Stories from the Family Tree

Synonymous with ringing in the New Year is the singing of Auld Lang Syne, a Scots poem written by Robert Burns in 1788 and set to the tune of a traditional folk song. Roughly translated as "old long since," or more idiomatically, "long long ago," you may have paid Robby Burns homage this past weekend.

I am reminded that while digging around in the outer branches of Barb's family tree, I came across the name Robert Burns. Surely not, I thought. By golly, it is, I discovered. Robert Burns, the Scottish poet, author of Auld Lang Syne, and To a Mouse (not to mention To a Louse) is waaay out on a limb of Barb's ancestral tree.

To be sure, she is not a direct descendant of Robbie. Not even close. In fact, the way it works is that a great great grand-uncle of Barb's was married to a woman whose grandfather was the brother of Burn's wife, Jean Armour. Did you follow that? And there's the story.

In High School English Literature they skipped over the part about Burns being quite the scoundrel. There may have been a quiet mention in College English Literature, but I went to Abilene Christian and we didn't talk much  about those things there, either.

Turns out that Robert's first child, Elizabeth Paton Burns, was born to his mother's servant, Elizabeth Paton while he was courting Miss Armour, who became pregnant with twins in 1786. Burns signed a paper attesting his marriage to Jean, but her father tore it up, "in the greatest distress, and fainted away." To avoid disgrace, her parents sent Jean to live with her uncle in Paisley.

Meanwhile, with Jean away and with Burns gaining some success as a poet, he managed to fall in love with Mary Campbell, whom he had seen in church. Some say they exchanged Bibles and plighted their troth over the Water of Fail in a traditional form of marriage, but alas, Mary died of typhus only a few months later, and that ended that.

Burn's rising popularity (and income) as a poet eventually won over Jean Armour's father and Robert and Jean were officially married in 1788 (by this time he had fathered four children with Armour, one of which was living). They eventually had nine children, though only three survived infancy.

Evidently, the domestic life didn't appeal to Burns; he went off to Edinburgh, where he embarked on a relationship with the separated Agnes "Nancy" McLehose, with whom he exchanged passionate letters under pseudonyms. Nancy eventually reconciled with her husband, but Burns had already moved on to Jenny Clow, Nancy's domestic servant, who bore him a son, Robert Burns Clow, in 1788. He also had an affair with a servant girl, Margaret "May" Cameron.

There's more, but you get the picture. In fact, Wikipedia says that through his twelve children by four different women, Burns has over 600 living descendants in current times.  So it's actually somewhat surprising that Barb is not actually related to auld Robbie.

Happy New Year

Monday Meanderings - 1.2.2017

Ha! I got the year right on my first try. Happy New Year to each of you and yours. It has been really interesting to see the overwhelming desire to put this year behind us and move on to what, hopefully, will be a better time.

Barb and I enjoyed our usual boisterous New Year's Eve - sitting quietly at home, listening to the neighbors defy the no-fireworks-in-city-limits ordinance. I actually was still up at midnight and marveled at the quantity and efficacy of the neighbor's pyrotechnics.

After a 5-year hiatus, I got behind the sound board for a wedding this past weekend. Attrition has brought about a dearth of sound guys at our church, so I have been filling in as needed for the programs, funerals, and yes, weddings. It was sort of like riding a bicycle; not much has changed in the overall wedding process (with the exception of the couples who - during the recessional - stopped to take selfies) so, it was no big deal.

Once again, my #1 guideline for a successful wedding was confirmed. No. Children. The little flower-petal dude was more than reluctant during the rehearsal - someone should have figured it out then. Sure enough, he absolutely refused to strew his petals down the aisle. Instead, he dumped them all in a pile, then mom had to carry him the rest of the way. At least he didn't have to stand with the attendants on the stage.

My #2 guideline is directed to whoever is running the sound  (that would be me, in this case). Don't let anyone wearing a microphone touch the mute or on/off buttons. I let the groom talk me into his controlling his mute button. I knew better. I just got tired of arguing with the kid. Oh well - he has to explain to his new bride why their vows didn't get recorded, not me.

Happy New Year. So far, so good.