So Betsy and I told such fascinating stories about the hole in the backyard that Tom was compelled to come over and do some digging. Following are some pictures of what we (well, he) found so far in about an hour's worth of digging ...
August 2005 Archives
(I was worried the ground was going to fall under Tom and he'd end up at the bottom of the hole.)
I don't know, but it's a LONG way down. Like, at least 10 feet. You'll have to wait for the next installment to see what we find ... or come over with a shovel.
I have some big holes in my backyard that need to get bigger. First I had four little holes in a kind of faery circle around a slight indentation in the yard. Then the holes got bigger and bigger, and the indentation got deeper and deeper, and the drunk guy from across the street came over and pointed out that there is a pretty good chance that what's going on here is rats are burrowing up from an old septic tank that was disconnected but somehow not completely disconnected, through piles of rubble thrown into the hole to fill it, up into my backyard. I haven't actually seen the rats, but you can clearly see the holes. So what I have is a rat circle, not a faerie circle.
One hole is even bigger than normal right now because Javiar came over and started digging on it yesterday when I wasn't here. I know this because the drunk guy across the street told me. The drunk guy is actually pretty smart, although he's also a crackhead. I'm thinking of starting a neighborhood watch and making him block captain because he really knows what's going on around here. The hole is now so deep I got worried about the upstairs neighbor's poodle falling in -- really, a horrible thought -- so I put Pica's couch fence around it. This means I'll be leaving the couch at Pica's mercy today, but I'm hoping she's old enough to be trusted not to maul the furniture anymore.
Anyway, apparently what we need to do is dig down something like 8 feet, cap off the old septic tank, and fill it with 3/4- gravel. As we dig, we should be careful where we stand because there might be a big deep 12-foot hole that we could fall in. Old shit and young rats would be at the bottom of the hole.
I was kind of freaked out about all this, but then Betsy pointed out it was just digging and maybe it could be fun? I thought, well, maybe it would be a good form of exercise, which led to the following idea:
Exercise classes based on manual labor. You'd have ditch digging, fruit picking, stuff like that to choose from. The instructors would try to teach you how to do the work in an ergonomic way or just shout, "faster, faster" at you like a boss if you lagged. You'd burn calories, anyway.
First session offered at my house this weekend!
p.s. I meant to say, this is very akin to Melissa's idea for Heavy Equipment Driving Camp. Woody rented a little cat thingy this weekend and he agreed that Melissa had a great idea -- everyone wanted to take a turn on his.
Pica and I were at the dog park the other day and struck up a conversation with this nice woman who I've seen before a few times with her dog -- she's always super friendly to me and Pica and this time we got to know a little bit more about each other. It turns out she's a photographer who shoots a lot of stock photos to sell through various databases. I didn't really know this was a career option but of course it makes sense. She asked me if Pica had ever done any modeling. Well, okay, no she didn't -- she actually asked if I thought Pica would be well behaved walking around with a model on a set and I had to say, "no way -- she'd freak out and go crazy." But this gave me an idea, which is for:
Dog Modeling School
A six week course in which your dog is taught to do things like: behave well around a camera crew on a set with lots of equipment and noises and stuff; be led around by models in high heels; ignore big plates of model spagetti; hold a pose for a long time; and various and sundry other photogenic tricks.
At the end of the course there will be a dog model show (friends and family invited), at which they will be led down a runway by models (probably just the other people in the class), while the pupparazzi takes photos. Each dog will get a couple of head shots and the opportunity to purchase a full photo portfolio, as well as a certificate that they have taken dog modeling so that owners can represent their dogs better to modeling agencies. This course should be co-taught by a dog trainer and an experienced photographer. For some, it would just be a fun forum for teaching your dog to behave in wierd situations, with the added bonus of providing some photos at the end. For others who think their dog is extra photogenic, it could just be the extra added edge they need to make it in the tough, dare I say dog-eat-dog, world of animal modeling and photography.
Seriously, I'll bet a lot of people would pay a fair amount to take a class like this. Oh, it looks like they already are. Oh, well. I don't think they are offering it in Portland, anyway.
It was a nice coincidence that right after blogging about how academics can be made accessible to a wider audience, I was able to attend a talk by a genuine academic rock star: Edward Tufte. He wrote The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, among other books, is retired from academia, and is on some kind of national tour (a woman who I do a lot of side contract work for paid my way to the workshop). Tufte is a guy with genuine intellectual insights and an impressive franchise. A killer combination, and he slayed me! At the end of his talk (which he made a point of ending a little early -- what a genius! More about this below ...) I was ready to stand up with a lighter in my hand and scream, "DO FREEBIRD!!" but, discretion being the better part of cool, as his roadies broke down and he signed books, I filed out in an orderly fashion with the other 500 attendees to check out the merch table. And what merch there was! Books, posters, special graph paper -- frankly, I think he missed a real opportunity by not offering t-shirts and coffee mugs, but I guess you could consider that some kind of integrity. The merch he does offer is quite nice -- wonderful production value, beautiful to look at and hold, engaging and interesting to read. He publishes it all himself (I'm telling you, he is a franchise).
Anyway, ET (as he calls himself) while specializing in the visual representation of data, had a lot to say generally about making presentations which gives me new perspectives on the issues I raised in my last entry, as well as confirming much of what I already thought. He reproduces some of it here.
His website also has an interesting forum on making presentations where he quotes Terry Teachout's guide to public readings at length -- I notice that Teachout and I agree on much! But I am extra impressed to see that he suggests an even shorter period of time for performances than I do -- 30 minutes:
"(3) Time the speech exactly. Do not under any circumstances exceed your allotted time. In fact,
(4) Never speak for as long as you're asked. In my experience, thirty minutes is ideal, especially if you're new at this."
He's talking about readings, not lectures, but still, 30 minutes!!
The thing about Tufte was, he was a great model of all this stuff: He gave us lots of cool stuff to look at while he talked so when our attention wandered we were still getting his message; he ended early; he had interesting visuals but didn't over-rely on them. One thing that I noticed him doing which he doesn't mention as a specific strategy was that he began the sessions after each break by talking about things that weren't directly related to the topic, but were interesting enough to get you back in your seat in a hurry. In other words, he didn't try to herd us back into our seats, but drew us to them, and he also didn't start with things that people who came in a bit late and missed would be screwed without having heard (actually, since most of what he said is in his publications, it wouldn't really matter, anyway). As an overtly bossy person, this carrot approach to getting people back in their seats was a good model for me.
Finally, although it was something like a 6 hour seminar, because each segment ended early and the whole thing ended early overall, at the end of the day I felt refreshed and excited at the end rather than exhausted.
He also challenged my assumption that for a learning experience to be "interactive" you have to break people into groups or what have you. What he said was something like, if you give someone with a bunch of information to think about, like a complex chart, that is itself interactive because people will start interpreting it on their own. I still think that you have to be a rock star to get away with lecturing people for 6 hours, but then again, what about those get rich quick on real estateseminars?. Those things last a weekend. I'll bet I could learn a little something about engaging presentations from them. Maybe not so much about how to convey information, or even how to make money at real estate, but I'll bet you don't get bored.
Anyway, if you have the chance to see his talk (and have a lot of money or someone will pay for it) I'd say definitely go. He has a student rate, too. Otherwise, his books are cool, and his website is pretty good, too. Maybe I'll start following him from town to town and call myself a Tufte-Head (or something).
P.S. I almost forgot -- one of my favorite parts was when he told us all to use the gender neutral plural, "their," rather than switching around with "his or hers" etc. in presentatations or trainings to avoid sexism or speaking awkwardly. I've been in favor of this forever and it was great to see someone senior endorsing the approach. I do it in writing, too, which he may or may not endorse but I figure it's just one of those things we have to change from the ground up.
