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August 30, 2011
Flapjack - Man's Best Friend - and a Great flickr subject
I have been happily participating in flickr's Project365 since June 12, 2008.
The premise is quite simple. Take at least one photo a day and post them to flickr. You do not have to do it every day - but get them online and posted before too long. I often batch load them for 5 days at a time.
I was inspired to do this by a wonderful friend Elizabeth Thomsen(who is also a librarian). Not sure what got me to start on June 12, 2008, but it soon became part of my daily routine.
What is interesting is how the family changed their opinion of this activity. At first, we could have powered a small town from the energy in rolling of the eyes. When I moved past one year into year two - there was some questioning, but they let it go. The beautiful element of digital photography is that besides the capital investment into a camera, the ongoing costs are so very cheap. As a kid, I would have taken millions of photographs, but the cost of developing the film kept me from fully expressing myself. That and my mom would kill me for spending all our money at the camera shop!
Now, we (as a family) are somewhat enthusiastic about Project365. Maybe that is my Polyanna POV, but in recent weeks, we would see something and my wife or my son would say "Picture of the Day?" This is what happened when we saw them work on the new scoreboard at Michigan Stadium (Ann Arbor)
or today when we saw Turkey Vultures collecting on the roof of a vacant house
or eating at Blimpy Burger - an Ann Arbor Institution
While you often have a good idea in your travels for a Picture of the Day, many, many days you do not. That is where it is helpful to have pets. Our wonderful Beagle Flapjack has been my Project365 subject 179 times in the 1000+ days since June 2008.
So these are not brilliant, but they document my life. When I forget everything else, I will have these to look through. Here are all the Project365 photos of our wonderful dog!
Slideshow of Flapjack's Project365 Photos:
Here are links to the sets that comprise my participation in Project365.
This entry was posted in the following categories: flickr (photos)Posted by cseeman at 07:53 PM | Comments (0)
The Sealed Book
I have enjoyed listening to Old Time Radio shows lately, either from the Internet Archive or via Sirius/XM Radio Channel 82.
The Sealed Book series is one of my absolute favorites - having been hooked by Greg Bell's XM channel 82. The Internet Archive sums up this radio mystery/thriller series with the lines that were read every week by host Philip Clarke to start the show (after the great gong): "keeper of the book has opened the ponderous door to the secret vault wherein is kept the great sealed book, in which is recorded all the secrets and mysteries of mankind through the ages, Here are tales of every kind, tales of murder, of madness, of dark deeds strange and terrible beyond all belief."
What was very cool is how it changed in just the few episodes it ran in 1945. At first, the keeper of the sealed book spoke. But after a few episodes, the keeper of the sealed book became silent - making him far more eerie!
This program was broadcast on Sunday evening from 10:30 to 11:00pm. It must have been quite spooky on an stormy night in 1945.
Posted by cseeman at 07:38 PM | Comments (0)
August 24, 2011
The Saint with Vincent Price (Radio)
I have enjoyed listening to Old Time Radio shows lately, either from the Internet Archive or via Sirius/XM Radio Channel 82.
The Saint with Vincent Price is a hoot. Very different from the horror films and shows I remember. There are 91 episodes here with Vincent Price playing the suave Simon Templar from 1947 to 1951.
Many people will find these broadcasts dated, but I find them fascinating. I think what it would be like to listen to these programs for the first time in a living room. And what it must have been like to write or perform for these shows. I am going to create blog entries for each series that I enjoy.
This entry was posted in the following categories: Old Time RadioPosted by cseeman at 09:02 PM | Comments (0)
August 22, 2011
The Generous Town of Goderich, Ontario
On Sunday August 21, 2011, a tornado struck the beautiful town of Goderich, Ontario. Goderich sits high on the bluffs on the Eastern shore of Lake Huron and is called “the prettiest town in Canada.” According to news reports, the residents in the port town had but 12 minutes warning for the coming storm cell as it approached the city.
While my heart goes out to the people of Goderich during this trying time, this allows me to share a story of why this is such a great place. In 2010, I planned the Fiddlers ReStrung summer tour. ReStrung is a fiddle group of high school students from Saline, Michigan and my older son Jeremy played cello in the group. The Tour was to circle the Great Lakes and our very first stop way Goderich.
ReStrung was playing in Goderich’s Multicultural Festival on June 27, 2010, which was sponsored by the Goderich B.I.A. (Business Improvement Area). We were supposed to play in the town center in the Gazebo at Courtyard Square, but were moved the North Street United Church because of rain and the threat of more. Since the church had wonderful acoustics, we opted for a semi-acoustic show – which most of our members playing without amplification. It was a wonderful sound in that glorious building that day. Despite the last minute move, we had a great turnout and it was a great way to start the concert and the tour.
That night, we checked into the Hotel Bedford, right in the center of town. That evening, we planned to picnic along the water, but rain forced us inside to the restaurant at the hotel. I walked around and took some photos of the town and the lighthouse when the weather broke in the evening. All was well and wonderful for our first night on tour. But what I will always remember happened the following day.
As part of the concept of touching each of the Great Lakes, I thought it would be great to have a picture of the group at each of the lakes that we visited. So on our way out of town the following morning, we stopped by the rocky beach and took this photo of the ReStrung along Lake Huron. With a gig later in London, Ontario that day, we were all in uniform.
The rocky beach was a wonderful place to take a photo. It was also a great place to skip rocks. We all had a great time playing a bit before heading back in the bus.
By around 9am, we were on our way to London, about 90 minutes away (if I remember correctly). We arrived around 10:30 and setup for our show at the London Public Library for noon.
But when we got there, one of the members of the group informed me that she could not find her purse. What was worse was that she had one of those driver’s license that allowed you to cross into Canada and that was in the purse. So without it – it was going to difficult, very difficult, to get back into the states. So after checking the bus twice over, she shared that she might have left it on the beach in Goderich. My naturally thought was – why did you take it off the bus…but that is another story. The reality was that the ID was in a purse on a beach 90 minutes away.
I got on the phone and called the Hotel Bedford staff and explained our situation and asked if they could help. She took my information and said that she would check into it and that I should call back. I was hoping they would have someone who could drive by and see if one was left. She did send someone over, but the real amazing thing happened when she called back. She had called around and found out that someone found a purse on the beach this very morning and handed it into the police. She gave me the number of the police and I called – confirming that it was the very one that was dropped. Not only did they hand the purse in, but everything was in tact.
Right after our show in London, we returned to Goderich to collect the purse. The goal that day was Long Point, but we will have to do that some other time. We arrived back in Goderich at 4pm and the young lady whose purse it was and I walked to the police station. We walked in and the policeman asked if I was here to pick her up? I did not understand and he repeated…. “Are you here to pick her up?” and pointed to a young girl, maybe 15, who looked like she was in trouble and wanted to be anywhere else. I said that we were in fact hoping to pickup the lost purse. After being quizzed to its contents to ensure that it was indeed hers, they gave it to us. We made it back before they left for the day (it is that kinda of town).
A few days later, I loaded the photos on the beach...and discovered that I took a shot of the very moment the bag hit the ground...amazing
You can see why it was hard to notice - it blended right into the rocky surface.
And while we got off to a rocky start on tour, I do not think I will ever forget the amazing hospitality of many people in that wonderful town. I hope to be able to repay them for the rebuilding that they are going to be undertaking over the next several years.
Posted by cseeman at 09:28 PM | Comments (0)
August 21, 2011
Drowning By Numbers, Part II
In 1993, I had a great opportunity to write an article in Pittsburgh History, the journal of the Historical Society of Western Pennsylvania where I worked at the time. The article was called
“Drowning by Numbers: The State of Baseball History (full text)” and it bemoaned the fixation (as I saw it) with numbers in baseball history. My goal in writing the piece was to encourage baseball historians to see the social significance of sports – rather than just “recounting and re-recording the numbers baseball players assembled over time.”
While the numbers-driven approach can remove the context of sport in American Culture, the appeal of this approach does make sense. Every action and reaction in baseball produces a number. Almost like a business has a balance-sheet recording revenue and expenses, a baseball team has numbers for everything – making this type of historical approach logical.
In the 18 years since I wrote that piece, I am not sure baseball history changed all that much, but I certainly have. As the director and librarian of the Kresge Business Administration Library of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, I am working with numbers all the time. I want to revisit this concept and see where I can apply it in two of my key areas in librarianship. As a director, I am focused on ensuring that we share our work with the school via annual reports. These are driven by numbers, some with more value than others. I am working on a Charleston Conference session on using Annual Reports for marketing purposes. So I will talk more about that later.
But I want to write today about my other world at Kresge Library. Even though I am the director of the library, I still have an active role in helping the Ross Community with library reference. I think this is a critically important part of my job to help faculty and students with reference. I believe this for a few reasons. First, it is a tremendously grounding part of my job. It allows me to know what the other librarians and staff are going through. If I am working on reference as well as the other librarians, I have a better sense of the ebbs and flows of the work.
So thinking about the baseball world when every action and reaction has a number associated with it, many see business the same way. At Kresge, we get questions from faculty, students and community members that ask for numbers that seem like they are tracked – but are hard to find. This represents one of our biggest challenges at the library – being asked a question about numbers that seem like they should be kept – but are nowhere to be seen. Or possibly the data is not kept in the fashion that the person wants. We have been asked all sorts of questions, like “how many shrimp are served by Red Lobster in a year?” Some have answers and others do not.
From a librarian point of view, we work hard on trying to figure out what they are hoping to do with the data, so many we can find proxy information. Maybe you do not get the exact count of how many shrimp are served at Red Lobster, but you get information (maybe anecdotal) on much money people spend on shrimp there. That is also a tough number to get, but sometimes it is available.
So where I am going with this is a question I got on Friday. What is the size of the “total retail product selection in the United States.” It is a cool question, and a tricky one. Basically, if I wanted to buy one of everything available in the retail marketplace in the US, how many things would I have…. What I was able to provide to this patron is some industry reports on the US retail sector, information from the BLS, and (later that weekend) , information about UPC barcodes. According to the UPC Database, there are 1,387,455 unique numbers. While that does not include everything sold, it is a pretty good start.
But in thinking about this question, I was wondering if Barry Schwartz’ Paradox of Choice” had any number. The examples in the excellent book all focused on products – like 85 different jams – rather than all the products available to consumers. But I did find this in searching via Google.
Now that is ironic…the "Paradox of Choice" is one of almost 1 million books you can get for your Kindle...talk about having a hard time making a decision...
I will be playing with this some more – but I wanted to get the conversation started.
Posted by cseeman at 10:16 PM | Comments (0)
August 17, 2011
Corey's Project 365 - Year Three
Here are the flickr entries from my Project 365 during my second year participating - From June 12, 2010 to June 11, 2011. The first photo is one of my favorites - little girls at a dance recital getting a peak at the audience.
You can follow this link: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjt3mqYr
Or view them here:
Here are all of my Project365 sets:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cseeman/collections/72157625580382719/
Posted by cseeman at 08:13 PM | Comments (0)
August 16, 2011
Corey's Project 365 - Year Two
Here are the flickr entries from my Project 365 during my second year participating - From June 12, 2009 to June 11, 2010.
You can follow this link: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjtercdj
Or view them here:
Here are all of my Project365 sets:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cseeman/collections/72157625580382719/
Posted by cseeman at 08:50 PM | Comments (0)
August 14, 2011
Cloak and Dagger
I have enjoyed listening to Old Time Radio shows lately, either from the Internet Archive or via Sirius/XM Radio Channel 82.
The Cloak and Dagger series is very cool - and portrays stories from the OSS during World War II. There are only 22 episodes here, but they are fun to listen to. They broadcast on NBC during 1950.
Many people will find these broadcasts dated, but I find them fascinating. I think what it would be like to listen to these programs for the first time in a living room. And what it must have been like to write or perform for these shows. I am going to create blog entries for each series that I enjoy.
This entry was posted in the following categories: Old Time RadioPosted by cseeman at 02:45 PM | Comments (0)
August 08, 2011
Corey's Project 365 - Year One
I wanted to start sharing more of my favorite photos and do some writing about photography. Not that I have all that much to say, but it has been a very fun part of my life over these past four years.
Here are the ones from my first year of Project 365 - From June 12, 2008 to June 11, 2009.
You can follow this link: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjteravu
Or view them here:
Here are all of my Project365 sets:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cseeman/collections/72157625580382719/
Posted by cseeman at 06:55 AM | Comments (0)