Filed under: 2nd Amendment, Art, Ballistics, Guns, Press, Promotion, Publishing, RKBA
Well, things with the Ballistic by the inch site have slowed down since I wrote this:
OK, this is a little weird.
I’ve created a monster. Well, not just me, but it’s at least largely my writing. Not that even my own sister could tell that.
See, the Ballistics by the inch project has been really successful. Really successful. Like over-a-quarter-million-hits-in-the-two-weeks-since-we-launched-it successful. I won’t know the actual number for a couple of hours, but already yesterday it was past that mark.
That’s more than twice the number of hits I’ve had to the Communion of Dreams site in the entire two years since it launched.
But yesterday the number of hits to that site crossed 500,000. In basically three months. And we’ll probably see a new round of interest next month, when the article in Concealed Carry Magazine comes out.
Wild.
So far, this has stayed primarily within the ‘firearms enthusiast’ community, and it may well just remain there. That’d be OK – that was the audience for which we did it. But it could also make the jump into the mainstream fairly easily, and that would be very odd, not unlike (but from a completely different direction) to when my little Paint the Moon project got picked up by the mainstream press.
Hmm, I need to remember to update my Wikipedia entry…
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Book Conservation, General Musings, University of Missouri
A weird thing: in the middle of a very serious economic downturn, my personal economic situation continues to rise. We sent all our tax information to our accountant this past week, and I was somewhat suprised to note that I had earned roughly twice as much last year as I have earned in, well, many years. It’s still solidly under the household average for the nation, but nonetheless is a significant bump up.
And this year I could easily earn twice again as much, if I stay on top of my work demand. This hasn’t always been the case. In fact, for a long long time I was of the opinion that it was almost impossible to actually earn a living – let alone a decent one – as a book conservator in private practice. I still wanted to do it, and found ways to make that work, but for a very long time I earned very little.
What changed?
Well, time. My reputation got more established. But more than that, just time. If I tell someone I’ve been doing this for 17 years, they figure I must be good at it. And having some grey in my beard helps a great deal as well. No, seriously.
That, and I made some changes in how I handle my fees when I closed the gallery and started working from home. Yeah, I increased them, but most people find that acceptable – with time and reputation, they expect your fees to go up. What I think is more important is that I established a minimum charge of two hours labor, meaning that people had to be fairly serious about wanting my services. It’s curious, but this actually helped a great deal.
See, when I first opened my shop, I would charge $25 an hour, with no minimum. And I would constantly get people coming in, wanting this little thing done or that little thing done, and wanting to only pay me for ten or fifteen minutes of work. It drove me nuts, but I thought I had to do it in order to keep the work coming in. Truth is, it took more time to deal with this stuff and track it than it was worth. Eventually I established a minimum half hour charge, but even that was pretty marginal. And people would constantly balk about the half hour charge, particularly when they just wanted some work done on a paperback or personal bible that could easily be replaced for a nominal cost. They saw me only as an alternative to buying a new book and getting on with life.
When I switched over to the gallery, with the bindery business as part of that, this sort of stuff dropped off some, but not altogether. Why? Because people were coming into an art gallery – a nice one at that – where they would feel a little foolish complaining about a $15 charge (my rates were then $30 an hour). This taught me a lesson, though I would still work long hours trying to keep the cash flow positive, dealing with every little project that came in. When I closed the gallery 8 years later, I knew one of the things I wanted to do was to set my fee schedule such that it forced people to respect my work right up front. I raised my rates (over the course of the time I was at the gallery they had gone up, but I basically doubled them again) and implemented the two hour minimum. I put that information on my voice mail and right on my website, and it is the first thing I’ll tell someone who calls me asking about binding work.
Now, during the period I was being a care provider, I didn’t have much time to do any conservation work. My time really was valuable to me, even though money was tight. So I wasn’t willing to try and fit in this or that small job, just to keep the money coming in. The temptation to go back on my fee schedule was minimized. It took a while, but soon I stopped getting the bulk of the calls wanting me to work on this or that easily-replaceable book. Instead, people now see my work as highly skilled labor, priced appropriately for the service, and suitable for care of rare and valuable books. I won’t get rich doing what I do, but I should be able to start paying off my debts from all those years of not earning much. Just not struggling is a very nice feeling for a change.
And there is the very big benefit that now I get to regularly work on really cool books and documents. As a friend noted this morning, following discussion of a set of volumes I had just done and told him about:
That is so cool. What an interesting job you have. Every project is different, fun stuff to look at. Very neat.
Indeed. It took a long time to get here, and I wouldn’t recommend the path to others. But I like where I’ve wound up.
Cheers,
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Cosmic Variance, General Musings, Harry Potter, J. K. Rowling, movies, Science, String theory
(This is one of my newspaper columns from Columbia Daily Tribune, updated with links. Thought it might be of interest while I am away for a few days. – JD)
Harry Potter and the Superstring Revolution
One of my favorite String Theory blogs (yeah, I have rather eclectic interests) recently got into a discussion of the new Harry Potter movie. Even hard-core physicists like to discuss movies in addition to the latest research into 11-dimension supergravity and the advantages of D-branes over M-theory. Which is good, because when these people start throwing around the advanced math wizardry needed to really understand these concepts I’m just a Muggle. But if they talk movies or art, I can chime in with the best of them.
Anyway, the discussion of Goblet of Fire turned into a debate of whether or not the Potter books themselves should really be considered literature. And, frankly, it was rather funny to watch a bunch of really smart people try and wrestle with something so completely outside of their field of training. Sure, most of them had taken some lit classes while undergrads, but they were working with tools not really suited to the problem. It’d be like me, with a little bit of math from college 25 years ago, trying to engage one of them on the validity of the Superstring Revolution. I might have a general understanding of the issues involved, but I’m completely unequipped to contribute anything meaningful to the debate in the language of science.
What was really interesting about this, though, was that none of them saw it that way. They were all certain that their opinions of literature, as an intellectual exercise, were completely valid. They had fallen into the trap of thinking that their likes or dislikes in literature was all that was necessary to have an informed debate.
This is a common problem with all the arts. Non-artists usually think that their personal preferences are all that matters. If someone doesn’t like a Pollock drip painting, then it isn’t “art.” If they think that opera is boring, then that’s sufficient to consider it outmoded and useless. And conceptual art . . . well, it’s beyond the conceptual boundary horizon for most folks and so doesn’t even exist. Might as well be magic.
Furthermore, if you challenge these opinions people will get really indignant and defensive. They don’t want to hear that an understanding of the issues involved is necessary to appreciate some art. The old line “I don’t know much about art, but I know what I like” will pop up in one form or another very quickly.
And on one level, that’s OK. I wouldn’t think of telling someone that they couldn’t form an opinion about what they like or dislike in art any more than I would consider telling them what they liked to eat for breakfast. But if you’ve never even heard of eggs, how can you have an opinion on the proper preparation of a nice quiche? It’d be like having strong feelings about word choice in the translation of Rilke’s Der Schwan when you don’t speak German. Sure, you can have an opinion, but it’s not something I’m going to take particularly seriously.
This isn’t to say that only an ‘expert’ can have a valid opinion about art. Hardly. By its very nature art is designed to elicit a response even in the uninformed. It’s perfectly OK to say “I like that painting.” Or, “I don’t care for opera.” But when someone starts to try and talk about the validity of a particular work of art (or music, literature, et cetera), they need to know what they’re talking about. Otherwise, people will treat you like the guy sitting in the sports bar who keeps yelling “pass the ball” at the TV during the baseball game. Or, perhaps more appropriately, like the guy at the Quidditch match who keeps calling for a relief pitcher.
Jim Downey
Sometimes, you just have to shoot Old Yeller.
OK, so what happened is this: the other day we got a phone call. Not just any phone call. It was from my wife’s landlord. This was not a good thing.
See, my wife moved out of her office this past summer, after deciding to call it quits with her business partner. We moved all her stuff out, but she’s been waiting for someone to sublease the place since. Earlier this month that actually happened, and the new tenant was due to move in next week. Then we got the call.
No, not what you expect: the deal didn’t fall through. Rather, there was, shall we say, a complication. A complication in the form of one large framing table, about 50″x54″. Built like a bloody damned toll bridge: massively over-engineered. And painted the same battleship grey.
This large table used to be mine. It was in my gallery for the whole time we were in operation. When I closed the gallery, my wife and her partner thought that they could use it for flat files (it had solid plywood shelves just for such purpose). When she and her partner split up, the partner said to leave the table and she’d use it. And now it was left there in the office, and the landlord called us to tell us we had to move it this weekend. Seems that the ex-partner was unavailable or something.
Now, I never wanted this table. But, like taking in a puppy, I was trying to do a good deed and give it temporary shelter. Here’s the story: Some 13 years ago, as I was starting up my art gallery I had been in talking with the manager of another business downtown which was going out of business. He sort of whined about how great the table was, and how bad it was that he couldn’t find a home for it, and how it was a shame that it was just going to get trashed. I think they had gotten it similarly some years previously. My business partner at the time thought that it would make a nifty addition to our shop, so I said that we’d take it off their hands. Me and a couple of other guys hauled the damned thing over to my business and got it set up. This was not an easy task – it is, as noted, completely over-engineered. Solid 4×4 legs, boxed in sides of half-inch plywood, runners for the drawers made of 1x4s, top of three-quarters inch plywood, et cetera. You could easily, and safely, shelter an entire family under the thing in the event of a natural disaster or nuclear war.
Anyway, when it came time to close my gallery five years ago, I had the pleasure of dragging this monster out of the basement and over to my wife’s office. Again, I got several friends to help in the hellish task. There was much cursing and barking of knuckles. I thought I was free of it.
And now, at the end of January some five years later, with very short notice, I had to deal with the thing once again.
“Fine,” I told my wife. “But I’m going to kill the sunovabitch this time. It’s coming apart – I am done moving that bastard in one piece. If it comes apart in useful pieces, we’ll hang onto the lumber, otherwise it’ll go into the dumpster there behind your office. But I am not moving it again.”
I loaded the necessary implements of destruction into the car this morning. Couple of crowbars. 20 pound sledge. Circular saw. My good construction drill, powerful enough to twist the tops right off of screws, if necessary.
We called the landlord, told him we were coming.
Got there, he met us. Opened up the office. We looked around, saw the critter. I took a look at it, couldn’t tell how it was held together with just a casual glance.
“Be right back.” I went out to the car.
When I returned. I had my hand sledge. I think the landlord was confused and surprised. He looked at it, then looked at me, and said “Now, *that’s* a manly hammer!”
I said nothing, just took the first swing. Popped under the corner of the top, testing to see what would happen.
It gave. I went to the next corner, swung again. Heard the squeak of nails pulling free. Hmm. The landlord stood there, a bit horrified at my brutality and casual violence towards the table. He didn’t understand.
Six more swings and the top was free. I examined. It’d been glued and nailed. Lots of nails. But the glue was no longer holding very well. In about five minutes, I had the thing knocked apart completely. Ten minutes after that, we had it loaded into the back of my station wagon. I let my wife talk with the landlord.
So now the parts of the dead table are in my shed. One of these days, when I get around to turning the shed into a workshop, I might resurrect it in a more useful size.
And if so, I think I’ll paint it yellow.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Art, Bipolar, Book Conservation, Depression, Health, Survival, Travel
“Say, while you’re here, maybe you can take a look at this piece of artwork I have. It was given to me by the artist, a friend, but it seems to be coming away from the frame.”
This is part of the price of having owned an art gallery and having done framing. Friends and family ask these questions. But it could be worse – I could be a doctor.
“Sure, be glad to.”
* * * * * * *
Email from a friend, following my post about depression:
I hope you’ve turned the corner on the inertia and are getting back into it. Got meds?
My reply:
Lets see – yeah, a couple of different ones for my bp. For the depression? Nope – the state of treatment there is still less than a crap shoot, in terms of finding something that works. And since I am not paralyzed by it, and know how to work my way out of it over time, I’d rather spend the time doing that than mucking around with random chemicals on a “try this for six weeks” basis.
* * * * * * *
I sat in the recliner, just enjoying the picture created by the fair-sized window on the wall across from me. All I could see were trees – no sky, no landscape beyond – just trees.
But what trees!
Coastal redwoods. And only three or four of them. About 25 feet outside the window, so I was only getting a partial view, mostly of that rough, somewhat shabby but oversized bark. With a couple of horizontal branches to make the composition more interesting visually.
“Nice view out this window.”
“Yeah, we sited the house to do that.”
My wife designed this house. It was good to be staying there.
* * * * * * *
On the flight out I sat and thought. For a long time. Listening to music, eyes closed. The Southwest jet was only about 2/3 full, so my wife and I had plenty of room in our three-seat row. I could just relax, spread out a bit, and think.
I don’t do that often enough. Usually, I am reading, blogging, watching something, having conversation. Or I am working – whether at my conservation bench, or playing house elf, or doing something else. But I seldom sit and just think.
Or listen to music. I got out of the habit while caring for Martha Sr. It was difficult to do, since so often I had to be listening to the baby monitor we used to make sure she was OK.
I used to really enjoy listening to music. Just listening, thinking.
* * * * * * *
“See, it’s pulled away from the frame.”
I looked at the piece. We’d hung it off an open door so that I could examine it easily while it was suspended. Abstract, large pieces of torn paper, colored in pastel tones of blues and greens and beiges. The pieces had been heavily gessoed then painted with a thinned-down acrylic. To add some surface effects, the mounted pieces of paper were rolled and folded such that they created a high relief of some five or six inches. All this tied onto the base sheet (also gessoed and painted), which was adhered to a piece of foamcore. This was then mounted by construction adhesive to a strong boxed-“H” wooden frame which you couldn’t see from the front. The whole effect was pretty good, if you like abstract art. Overall, the piece was about 3′ wide by 5′ tall.
“Yeah, I see what you mean. The top part has curled away from the frame, peeling away.”
“You can do whatever you need to. I’ve got some Gorilla Glue – maybe that’s strong enough. Or, if you want to screw the piece back onto the frame, I can get some paint to blend in and mask the screws. Whatever you think it needs.”
I looked at the piece again, hanging there. Pulled a bit, knocked off a chunk of the bead of adhesive. “Let me think about it.”
* * * * * * *
They tell you to expect it to take a year to recover. You don’t believe them.
But they’re right.
Oh, that doesn’t relieve you of the duty to try and get your shit together more quickly. To try and get past the soul-aching exhaustion that comes with having fought the good fight for so very, very long. You have to do that. It is absolutely necessary.
But it isn’t sufficient. It will still take a year. Or longer.
* * * * * * *
I sat in the chair, looking out the window. I had changed my position ever so slightly – now, on the extreme right, I could see about half of the large birdfeeder. We had filled it and hoisted it up that morning. Now maybe a dozen Steller’s Jays were mobbing, taking turns at the feeder, flicking in and out of my picture.
If you know Bluejays, you know these guys. Smart. Stubborn. Survivors.
Sometimes, being a little stubborn is what’s needed. Stubborn in a smart way. While several of their number kept some larger crows away, the others would eat. Then they’d swap. Smart.
* * * * * * *
“We’ll get what we need when we’re out. Is there an art supply store in Ft. Bragg?”
“Yeah, Racine’s. Downtown.” My sister-in-law looked at me, a little quizzical. “I’ll be happy to talk with the artist and get some paints and do the touch-up, if you just want to remount the piece with screws or something. There’s no reason you have to try and match what she used.”
“I won’t need any paints. Nor any screws.”
“What are you going to do?”
“Well, the problem isn’t the adhesive. The problem is the lamination.”
“Sorry?”
“See,” I pointed at the back of the piece. “There’s just this piece of foamcore. There’s nothing to balance the force of the paper mounted to the other side. Rather than trying to force the whole thing back, which will probably result in snapping the foamcore backing, we’re going to dismount it entirely. Then I will put a layer of stiff cloth on the back, using an adhesive similar to the gesso on the front. I want to go to the art supply store, since they’ll either have the PVA I want, or I can get some gesso and use that.”
“Will that work?”
“Yup. It’s a basic process from book conservation, just applied on a larger scale than I usually do it. Same thing as getting the balance right on the cover of a book – cloth on the outside, paper on the inside. It stops the bookboard from warping.”
* * * * * * *
It’s been a year. Or it will have been next week, when I’m on the east coast.
On the day I’ll meet my co-author for the care-giving book, as it happens. Talk about serendipity.
Nothing magical about that. But anniversaries have meaning.
* * * * * * *
I can’t quite explain how it changed. But somewhere along the way out to California I found something. Whether it was in the music, or the thinking, or just the quiet place in my head that resulted from an enforced relaxation for several hours, it was there.
Stubbornness.
Not the stubbornness which saw me through the long years of care-giving. That was different. Defiance in the face of the disease ravaging Martha Sr.
No, this was less about simple survival, and more about . . . well, joy, I guess.
I wasn’t swept away with feelings of overwhelming happiness or anything. But there was a sense that joy could once again be mine. Not just satisfaction in work. Not just enjoyment of life. But joy in being able to create. Maybe not yet. But the possibility was there for the future.
A smart kind of stubbornness.
* * * * * * *
We turned the dining room table into a workbench. I laid down newspapers, then we positioned large jars to support the artwork from the front without damaging the high-relief rolls and folds of paper. I needed access to the back of the piece, and this was the only way to do it.
First, I cut away the frame. Some of the facing of the foamcore came off with the frame, but not much. Then I removed all the remaining old adhesive from both the foamcore and the frame itself. I set the frame aside.
Then I mixed up the straight PVA I’d found at the art supply store with water, 50-50. Set that aside.
I took the piece of light cotton duckcloth I’d gotten, and cut it into three strips, each about 2′ tall and as wide as the foamcore. I laid out more newspaper on the floor. I laid a strip of cloth on the newspaper. And using a 4″ plastic putty knife, I poured/spread the PVA across the cloth. It was necessary for it to be completely saturated, the fibers completely relaxed. I waited for a minute for this to happen. Then I picked up the cloth by one edge, and took it to the table. I draped it across the foamcore, and spread it out smoothly, making sure to have good adhesion.
I repeated the process with the other two strips of cloth, overlapping them a few inches.
“Now we wait,” I told my SIL.
“For what?”
“For it to dry overnight. If the cloth shrinks the right amount as the PVA dries, it will cause a balancing force to the gessoed paper on the other side, and the foamcore will flatten out. If it is not enough, another application of PVA in the morning will help get the balance right. If it is too much, I can spray it with water and let the adhesive relax. It’s just a matter of finding the right balance.”
She looked at the contraption sitting on the table. She said nothing, but it was clear she was skeptical.
* * * * * * *
I had been waiting around for something to happen.
Well, no, I had been trying to figure out how to force something to happen. And being very depressed that I couldn’t do it.
I was being stupid stubborn. Forcing myself to work. To write. To try and find some happiness in this or that.
It was, perhaps, a necessary stage. Just to show myself that I had the stubbornness I needed, even if it was applied ineptly.
But there was a better path. A smarter path. Just relax, and start walking.
* * * * * * *
I poured myself a cup of coffee, walked over to the table.
The foamcore was almost perfectly flat. A slight rise on one corner where the cloth was stronger than the minimal amount of paper on the other side, but that would flatten out just fine.
I sipped my coffee, glanced out the window. From that vantage point I could see the whole bird feeder. There were crows there now, arguing with one another.
Sometimes you just need to understand your way out of problems.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Art, Gene Roddenberry, General Musings, movies, Science Fiction, Star Trek, The Prisoner
I caught the news last night, but somehow had managed to miss this comment to my post of a week ago – Patrick McGoohan has passed away.
Ah, damn.
And so has Ricardo Montalban.
Ah, damn.
We tend to think of actors as their most important (to us) roles. People who won’t recognize the name of McGoohan probably know him as #6 from The Prisoner. Likewise, Montalban is forever known better as Khan Noonien Singh to generations of SF fans. And while this is unfair – both men were accomplished actors who played many roles, and who lived interesting lives – it is understandable, because they came into our lives for only a limited time and in this particular context. And they live on in those characters in our minds.
So, yes, farewell to each. But I will always cherish their memorable performances.
Jim Downey
No, not that kind. Rather, first contact of a technological kind:
“First Contact With Inner Earth”: Drillers Strike Magma
A drilling crew recently cracked through rock layers deep beneath Hawaii and accidentally became the first humans known to have drilled into magma—the melted form of rock that sometimes erupts to the surface as lava—in its natural environment, scientists announced this week.
“This is an unprecedented discovery,” said Bruce Marsh, a volcanologist from Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, who will be studying the find.
* * *
The drilling was being conducted for an existing geothermal power plant built to harvest heat from the world’s most active volcanic zone, Kilauea volcano, which has been spewing lava continuously since 1983.
Don Thomas, a geochemist from the University of Hawaii’s Center of the Study of Active Volcanoes, said it was just a matter of time until some drilling operation there struck hot magma.
OK, not exactly a borehole pressure mine (gods, I love that game), but still very very cool. Or hot, to be literal. 1,900 degrees Fahrenheit.
I’ve had an idea about using such a source for doing cast stone sculpture – pouring molten magma into heat-resistant forms – I wonder if they’d be interested in having an artist in residence?
Jim Downey
Filed under: Apollo program, Art, Astronomy, General Musings, NASA, NPR, Science, Space
The rocket blasted off with a huge spread of flame and hurled the men into space. They became the first earthlings to watch their home planet grow smaller and smaller and smaller, until it was floating far away and tiny in the darkness.
From this morning’s NPR coverage of the Apollo 8 mission to orbit the Moon 40 years ago. Most of the world remembers it best thanks to Earthrise, the iconic image from the mission, which gave us all a new perspective of our fragile little home.
It’s a good story. As I said elsewhere in a discussion of my memories from the event, I expect there will be few other such moments in my life.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 