The great bifurcation

I have felt pulled in a couple of different directions in this blog since it started nearly five years ago (!) now. I originally started it to post about professional interests as a librarian, and the occasional personal or amusing post about anything else. But lately it has been harder and harder to decide which way to go, but I've finally made a decision (with the help of a parent-in-the-trenches). "Lost in the StuporMarket" will from now on be a blog I write about life as a 40-something dad of small children. I will probably post plenty about other things that rile me up or make me laugh, but the library-centric stuff is to move to a new blog, the title of which has yet to be decided.

Holly's Apartment Therapy

Holly 'golightly' aka lucitebox has entered the Apartment Therapy "Fall Colors 2008" contest. I hope she gets to the voting phase. I'd buy that for a dollar!

Kistner Supply Cashmere Collection

Elizabeth launched her new product lines "Kistner Supply Cashmere Collection" and "blog press and I hope we'll get some print press as well. She has really done an incredible job.

whole sentences!

Trixie is starting to speak in entire sentences. A couple of days ago she said "Come back bunny."

Mostly though her favorites are 'baby', 'monkey', and 'zoo'.

Circle calendar and mental maps

I am often frustrated by the fast approach of deadlines and birthdays and holidays. I plan excursions that I want to take "within the next few months" or I make loose plans to see friends "soon." What inevitably happens is that I am rushed to finish projects or buy gifts, and those excursions or dinner plans never happen. I think the reason is that I tend to compress my experience of time in the present and immediate future, while expanding time that is more than a few weeks away. One might say to me, "Steve, get a freakin' calendar!" But, I have never been able to look at a square calendar of one month and perceive time in a uniform manner. I began to think about the year as having a circular shape and what a calendar in that form might look like. For ideas I began searching google and had very little luck. Finally I came across the Chaise DVD Magazine and a circle calendar project by the artist David Tinapple. What follows is the email exchange I had with him.

David,

I saw the short video of your circular calendar on chaise magazine 's
site. I have been thinking about creating one for a long time and
haven't spent any time designing it. I thought it would be useful for
me to have a different perspective on the length of the year and the
actual tine I have from month to month. My perception is always skewed
toward different parts of the year being longer than others.

In short, I would love the template page you used to create the
calendar, or some basic instructions about what kind of an arc to
create with the circles.

Hi Steve,

Here is the calendar PDF I made. Seems like a long time ago now. I was
interested in the different "mental maps" of time people make. I
always saw the year as a circle, with summer at the top, winter down
below, and I move counter clockwise around. I asked people, and it
seems most think of the movement as clockwise... So I made a circular
representation that could go either way, and one that used a single
sheet of paper copied multiple times. There are registration points on
the sheet where you match up and pin to a wall.

I did this one by hand in Illustrator, but recently I have been
working on a different one, still circular, but I'm using the
"Processing.org" programming language to generate PDF's.

Cheers,

-David

David,
Interesting. Mine goes counter clockwise with Spring on top and March
and April in the apex position. I am left handed. But as I said, it
seems more like an ellipse than a circle where Spring and Fall are
compressed. Christmas occupies the "West" and Mid July, the "East." As
I go through the cycle, time is magnified and thus extended for the
week that I 'occupy' that space. The speed of the motion through the year is not
consistent. The year is bisected by a horizontal plane and floats on a 30
degree angle with Spring again occupying the high end of the angle. As
I think about it, the cycle has zero relationship to the linear
progression I envision about my lifespan. It doesn't unroll or
move in any direction. It is a stationary and I move around it, on
it, through it.

Thanks for the idea. I just had a great time thinking about that.

-Steve

Steve,
Your mental map is really interesting. I am right handed, and move
counter clockwise, but I too experience it as my movement around a
stationary "track" of the year. North South East West are for me
Summer, Winter, Spring Fall respectively. And now that I think of it
there is some time compression in the spring fall.

I have seen a few people use my circle.pdf for almost a year, and the
results are visually amazing. They report too that it is refreshing to
finally see a whole year unfold like that... makes some patterns
apparent and makes the progression of time visible in some interesting
way.

I sometimes think of it like analog -vs- digital watch faces. They are
two very different forms of representation, analogical -vs- digital.
Digital needs to be read, deciphered, decoded. The marks on a digital
watch have no intrinsic meaning... its a code. And also a digital
watch shows only what time it is now. An analog watch face moves
"analogous" to the time being measured. An analog clock might take
some learning, but the time is not encoded, its a trace (like vinyl
-vs- CD). Looking at an analog watch I find that what I see is not
what time it is "now", and rarely is that what I care about. More what
I am looking for is the angle between now and when I need to be
somewhere. Somehow I know how big an angle I need to get from place A
to B.

Nice to think about this again. Makes me want to keep going with it.

Thanks for your description of your mental map.

-David

Fine art of aging

Heard a Nick Lowe interview last night on the radio show _To the best of our Knowledge_ from Wisconsin Public Radio. The show was called: "the fine art of aging"

http://www.wpr.org/book/070930a.html

Fwd: Summercamp! in Chicago

Hope you'll all consider going, Sarah Price also co-directed _American
Movie_ a sundance winner 1999.

Steve

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Summercamp! in Chicago
Date: Wed, 15 Aug 2007 19:55:24 -0400
From: sarah price <ssprice@gmail.com>
To: info@summercampmovie.com

Hello friends--

Summercamp! opens at the Siskel Film Center Aug. 25-28. I'll be there
on the 25th for a Q&A, along with some of the kids in the film, with a
reception to follow sponsored by IFP Midwest. This is open to the
public (IFP members receive a discount ticket price on the 25th), and
should be a lot of fun. Rumor has it there will be camp snacks and
crafts (and bar) at the reception...

I look forward to seeing everyone and catching up, and please pass the
info on to your Chicago friends!
Thank you!
-Sarah

SUMMERCAMP!
Directed by Bradley Beesley & Sarah Price
Featuring music by the Flaming Lips and Noisola.

August 25-29, 2007
Gene Siskel Film Center
164 North State Street
Chicago, IL 60601
312-846-2600
http://www.siskelfilmcenter.org/
Tickets $9 (adults) $7(students)
Sat @ 3:30pm, Sun @ 3:15pm, Mon-Wed @ 6pm

Co-director Sarah Price in person Sat. Aug 25th.

www.argotpictures.com <http://www.argotpictures.com>
www.summercampmovie.com <http://www.summercampmovie.com>
www.myspace.com/summer_camp_movie <http://www.myspace.com/summer_camp_movie>

REVIEWS:

"the saddest, sweetest, most magical and most deeply affecting movie of
the season." SALON.COM <http://SALON.COM>

"Summercamp is a riot of talent shows and campfires, canoeing, and
holistic clowning." THE NEW YORK TIMES

"With tenderness and joy, Bradley Beesley and Sarah Price capture the
precious moments of preteen freedom—not from parents and school, but
from self-awareness and doubt." TIME OUT NEW YORK

"Pure and heartbreaking, if you don't relate to this film you were
never a kid." CHICAGO TRIBUNE

"A sweeter, more unassuming movie isn't likely to come our way anytime
soon." NEW YORK POST

"utterly charming.........Beesley and Price's young subjects are smart
and unusually articulate, and they talk about their lives with a
perspective one doesn't expect from children." TV GUIDE ONLINE

"Summercamp, a marvelously honest new film." NEW YORK SUN

"In its shuddering truth, Summercamp! dares to suggest that the grand
disaster of youth as we knew it was actually... fun." THE REELER

"A feel-good hit for the summer" THE ONION

--
Steve Brantley
University of Illinois at Chicago
Daley Library
M/C 234
Box 8198
Chicago, IL 60680
312-996-4032
jbrant1@uic.edu

--
Steve Brantley