Mike Ball

On Sunday, Flo and I took a trip by ourselves down to Southern Indiana and visited a town named Columbus. I never expected what I found. This small town has, over the years, built up the most wonderful collection of architecture that I’ve seen. It seems that whenever they wanted to build a public building they went out and got one of the best architects in the world to build it. This inspired private companies, too, so a lot of the commercial buildings are equally wonderful. Kathy had suggested that we stop by, then go on to a state park. Instead, we got caught and used all of our time looking around Columbus. We only saw part of what they had to offer, and even then I missed getting parts of it on film because my camera ran out of power.

I think I’d like to spend a day or two there some time, and take enough time to see it all. There’s a wonderful park by the river, too, that shows signs of the same sort of care.

I am impressed by this town. It takes an extraordinary level of civic spirit and focus to create something like this. Some of the towns I’ve known in California would still be arguing about the buildings these people finished in 1967!

Well, it’s been two quiet days, actually.

I visited a strange bookstore called “Uplandharma”. They had a good collection of early science fiction from the 50’s and 60’s. There were a couple of kids manning the stores dressed in what can only be called “midwest goth”. You know, sort of a cross between goth and Amish.

We went for a walk along the river, on a trail made from an old railroad right-of-way. It was level, very green, and cool. I have some pictures, but they really don’t show anything interesting. They call it the greenway.

On the home front I finished cleaning up my mother’s computer, getting rid of the spyware and getting her passwords set up properly, then set up a blog for sister Kathy. We’ll also set up a forum on ballfam.net so that people can discuss events and ask Mama questions about what life was like back then. More when it’s actually there.

Today we went to an open house at a log cabin, with a bunch of itinerant antique sellers behind it. The cabin was nice, a lot like Daddy’s in Virginia. The antiques were overpriced and boring. I decided that “primitive” is a marketing term for “badly made”.

Came back, had dinner, went for a walk on another part of the greenway.

This morning the women went to the Quilters Hall of Fame while I stayed and worked on some neglected Sun stuff. I gather that they weren’t terribly excited by the particular exhibit they had up at the time, but the house was really interesting.

The weather was hot and humid, so we decided to wait for later in the afternoon to go to the fair. While we were waiting, an incredible storm came up suddenly, blew and rained for a little while, then went away. There were tornado warnings, but no tornado. The storm had winds of 80 MPH, and did quite a lot of damage. As you can see, there were some big trees down, and lots of people lost power. Impressive.

The fair was small, but fun, and definately rural. Lots of 4H exhibits, some animals, some adult handcrafts, and a few commercial exhibits, almost all for local businesses. We ate fair food, pulled pork and an onion flower (really heavy) and came back. I thought it was more fun than the SD fair, though it was only a fraction of the size.

Yesterday we came to Indiana to visit my Mother and my sister Kathy. It took most of the day to get here, due to the lack of direct flights from San Diego to Indianapolis. The difference in time zones makes it seem longer. At least Indiana has pretty much decided to join the rest of the world on daylight saving time. The farmers have been resisting for years, and this is only the first year that they’ve decided to do it. Arguments continue.

Today we went to the Knit Knack shop somewhere in the middle of the state. Flo has been learning machine knitting and couldn’t resist the chance to stop in. It’s not like there are lots of shops devoted solely to machine knitting. I’d have guessed that only the internet let them operate in the midst of Indiana, but apparently they’ve been going for 30 years. We forget that mail-order has worked well for a long time.

On the way back, we stopped at the “Seven Pillars of the Mississinewa” Just downstream from the Mississinewa Lake. They may not bring wisdom, at least not directly, but they are interesting. Interestingly enough, the little park by the side of the river was named after the Miami Indians. It was certainly a long way from the Miami I think of.

It was a very nice day. There really weren’t any “high spots”, either in the day or the topography, but it was all very pleasant. Oh, yeah, we saw a lot of corn, too.

I just saw an odd link in a friends blog (geoffarnold.com). Here’s a short sample.

At one of the places I work I teach a very small, very high level non-credit course. It is fun, because we can actually talk about things ….then I asked the other three students (there were only four) how much reading they did. All three of them said that they didn’t read books at all. Ever. They didn’t seem ashamed to admit this, even though they are all university students in their third or fourth years. They don’t even read textbooks.

Some people just live in a different world, I guess.

I was talking a couple of days ago with a young gentleman who used to own a comic store. He inspired me to write a little bit about comics for those who haven’t kept up.

Sometime when you weren’t looking, comics got good. If you were looking, good for you, but I wasn’t and a few years ago I was astonished to discover just how good they really were. Over the years I’d acquired some books of old strips (especially Pogo, of course) but I hadn’t really kept up with the new ones. Then I found a book by Scott McCloud called Understanding Comics. I bought it because it looked like an interesting discussion of communication, and I might be able to use that when building computer interfaces. It was that, but it was more, and I got interested again in what was happening with comics today. Sometimes they call them “graphic novels”, but I think that’s just the publishers’ trying to sound elevated.

The first really good modern comic I found was The Sandman. With text by Neil Gaiman and illustration by some of the best comic artists working. It’s a series of stories, with themes and characters from classical mythology, many folktales, history (including Shakespeare), and a seriously original imagination, tied together in a long plot. Some of the images are disturbing. There’s still an element of “gross out the old folks” in the art, but the disturbing images really are part of the story. I recommend it highly.

There are lots more that I can recommend, but rather than talk on, I’ll let you check them out.

Here’s a short list:

The Life Eaters

By David Brin, a well known physicist, science fiction writer, and all-around interesting guy. What if the WW II was even madder than we think it was?

Reinventing Comics

Another Scott McCloud book, talks in more detail about all the modern changes

24 Hour Comics

A collection of comics done very quickly. All of them are different. Some of them are excellent.

The Preacher

Violent, often offensive, always fascinating. In the spirit of a Quenton Tarrantino movie. If you couldn’t stand Kill Bill you won’t be able to stand this either.

That’s enough, there are lots more, but you can find them yourself. There are still lots of super-hero stories out there. There have been super-hero stories as long as there have been stories (think Homer, or Gilgamesh) and will be super-hero stories as long as we have young men around. Most of them are less than wonderful, but they are still deeper than the ones we saw in the 50’s.

And I haven’t even said anything about Anime…….

I read this article in the paper today when the title caught my eye.

We’ve been watching a fair number of “Midsomer Murders” on DVD from Netflix recently, and we really enjoy them. We sort of space them out, because too much at once is definitely cloying, but they are worth checking out.

This is a rare case where we like the show better than the books. We read a few of the books, and though the plots are basically the same, the characters are treated much more harshly. The books have a rather bitter edge, and one of the main characters (Troy) is rendered as self-centered and obnoxious. In the movies he’s quite likable, if somewhat unaware. Some may prefer the more cynical treatment of the books, but both Flo and I prefer the shows.

Flo was helping out at the fair booth for the Machine Knitters Guild, which got her two tickets for free admission. I couldn’t turn this down, so this afternoon I went to join her there. Besides, I like fairs. At least I thought I did.

Either the fair is changing, or I’m changing, or both, because it just wasn’t as exciting as I’ve remembered. Part of the problem may have been low attendance at the fair. The mobs are part of the fun, and there just weren’t very many people there. There really wasn’t a lot of livestock, and there was very little interest from fairgoers. We were walking through the new barn (and a very nice one it is) looking at sheep, and we were the only people there other than sheep owners. There were no small animals or birds at all, but it was probably just not the right time for them. I always like to look at the various crafts, but that wasn’t all that great either. There just didn’t seem to be many entries. There was a great commercial woodworking show, with some absolutely lovely work, though nothing I felt like I wanted.

I think that San Diego is just loosing its rural and semi-rural roots. The back hills are filling up with suburbs as the city creeps out further and further. The only people doing handcrafts in town are old people, so you just don’t get the same interest in the shows. In retrospect I’m not surprised. The Santa Clara County Fair, in the bay area, has gone even farther along this route. We found it disappointing too.

We’re changing too. We don’t have kids at home, and we are planning to move anyway, so things like the garden shows weren’t exciting anymore. The gadgets never were all that interesting, but now we really don’t want more stuff.

Oh well, life changes.

It’s the end of the year at UC Irvine, and we made a couple of trips up there to see and hear Andy perform. I missed a couple of them when I was in the Bahamas, so I had to go to these, even if one of them seemed awfully short for a lot of driving.

The first was Wednesday night, and was a wind ensemble concert. No pictures, it looked a lot like the other concerts. It sure sounded better than the earlier concerts, though. A year of work made a lot of difference.

The second was Sunday, and we heard two back-to-back concerts by the Campus Band and the Stage Band. Since these had pretty much the same players and conductor, I wasn’t real clear on the distinction. The first half, the Campus Band played show tunes, from the William Tell Overture to selections from The Phantom of the Opera. It was fun, though I’ve never really cared a whole lot about Andrew LLoyd Webber. The second half was the Stage Band with a selection of popular songs from questionable sources. The best was I Wanna Be Like You, which is evidently from the Disney Jungle Book, but didn’t show it. I’d subtitle it “Fun with sound”.

After the concerts we got invited to watch a Clown Show. It seems that one of the upper level drama courses is in clowning, and they were going to show what they had learned. The performances were very short, ranging from very good to nothing much, but the enthusiasm of the performers let them carry off even the weak skits. I wish I’d had the camera for that one, but (see above). All in all, very much worth the travel.

Here’s an unlikely news article that I liked: Jack the cat chases black bear up tree.

I can just imagine the bear’s thinking.

I could take this guy, but I’d hurt a lot afterward, and I don’t have to. I think I’ll skip this one!

Fifteen pounds of berserker tomcat is not something to take lightly