Zero to One-Eighty » mattabesset

Say no to endless war

Adrian Cooke — Sun, 23 May 2010 01:49:44 +0000

American metal

American metal

Adrian Cooke — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 19:27:55 +0000

American Metal Crafters building. Enhance it!

Now that she can venture further afield, Genie and I pass this building on our evening walks. Perhaps dusk light is to ogling buildings as beer goggles are to ogling people. But there’s a lot to love about this building at any time of the day. It’s a place where they make a living out of making physical objects, for one. And the place is covered in these excellent signs as well.

American Metal Crafters sign. Enhance it!

“American Metal Crafters • Metal Boxes • First Aid Cab. • Specialties.” Doesn’t matter what you need. They can make it, see? (“And the book itself is but a tissue of signs.”) Ah, yes. There’s so much signification going on in these signs. So much strength, simplicity and value. A semiotician’s dream.

Shipping and receiving. Enhance it!

Hey web designer, that’s not a drop shadow, this… You get the idea. To think of the effort that we collectively put into making things feel this way—textures in visual design, physicality in interface design, pre-worn jeans, mud on the SUV (huh?). Here it is all effortless, functional, un-reflexive. From a point in space and time when such things came naturally. And we are never going back.

So, I trust I’ve won you over. Great effin’ building.

On the Mattabesset trail with Genie

Adrian Cooke — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 03:11:43 +0000

Enhance it!

Last weekend Genie and I walked a small section of the Mattabesset trail and took in the view. She is a real climber, my girl. The hill kind, not the social kind. It’s fun to watch her tail during the hike, a reliable indicator of her comfort level. Afraid of no animal except the human, no vegetable, no mineral, and no heights, my girl is the mountain goat of dogs, the ferret of the woods, and the outdoorsy one in the family.

Enhance it!

This white expanse of ice is known as Black Pond. I don’t know how it came by that name. It is simply what you get when you type your question into the Internet. People were out on the pond that day. There were still a few souls traipsing over it when Genie and I went home, and you could see the tracks of many more. It reminded me of a sad story I had heard a few days earlier of a man in the U.K. who died trying to save his two dogs who had fallen through some ice. I drove home especially carefully.

Enhance it!

Water can reveal the de facto porousness of apparently solid rock, but frozen water does it so much better. While we were up on top we met a guy who spontaneously shared his personal geological Wikipedia article on the hills. They are filled with volcano-spawned trap rock, and you can follow the Mattabesset trail into Massachusetts. And that tower in the distance is the test facility of the Otis elevator company, and I know we need the materials but it’s such a shame how that open cut mine scars the land.

I couldn’t disagree.

Athenian II

Adrian Cooke — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 15:39:02 +0000

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My first trip to an Athenian diner was with Elena a few days after we met. We were both living in New Haven and she had a car so she could drive us there. When I asked her how far away it was she said, and I will never forget it, “it’s farther than you can even imagine.” She was referring to 1426 Whalley Avenue, but late at night in a then-unfamiliar part of the city it could have been anywhere as far as I knew. E just called it Athenian, but I later came to understand that it was Athenian I: the first member of a regional diner quartet.

To an out-of-his-element Australian there’s nothing like the American diner. It’s one of this country’s best and most important institutions. It’s at Athenian that I finally learned how to order food in America. Know how your eggs will be cooked, know your toast options, know your salad dressings, and most importantly, ask for coffee. You only need to ask once and it will keep getting refilled as long as your arse is parked in that booth. This amazing social technology has not reached my homeland, as far as I know.

So imagine my delight when we upped and moved from New Haven to Middletown, only to discover that Athenian II is right here in Our Town. (I had dined at Athenian III in Milford a few times, on Christmas shopping excursions to the mall in years gone by, without ever knowing where II was.) Now I’m sure that others will disagree with me on this, and so be it: New Haven has The Pantry, Middletown has O’Rourke’s, up the road is the excellent Cromwell Diner, but to me the best diner in central Connecticut is Athenian. Because it’s my local, because the staff are so friendly, and because of the chrome and pink neon.

The day that I took the photo of the dessert bar I was flying solo, ordering my favourite (a Greek salad, coffee), and reading a book. It was a little hard to concentrate on the words because two old timers were sitting at the counter, one a self-identified Republican, the other a self-identified Democrat. They were jabbing each other (and the Republican guy briefly scored some cheap shots against one of the waitresses who quickly tore him a new one) and I couldn’t help but overhear their conversation, punctuated as it was by long pauses and outlandish proclamations.

“We’re all Americans, we all hate the Taliban.”

“I don’t hate anyone. I don’t bother them, they don’t bother me.”

“You Democrats like the Taliban?”

“Hey, you saying that because I’m a Democrat I’m un-American?”

“This is a blue state, buddy.”

…back and forth, et cetera.

Sunday breakfast

Mini with the works

Adrian Cooke — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 03:28:13 +0000

What you need to know: supercharged, 1.6 liters, four cylinders, 214 horses

Seen on Main Street earlier in the week. It’s the Mini Cooper S with John Cooper Works GP tuning kit (supercharger, wheels, brakes, suspension, bits of red). They have a Flickr group all of their own. Naturally, the front brake calipers are rouge. I mean, how could you not? Would be a dereliction of duty.

Post thumb by Paul Mullett.

Sunday breakfast

Adrian Cooke — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 12:57:22 +0000

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Hot, black coffee, crisp apple slices, cheddar and mushroom omelette, and thick, buttered toast from a loaf she baked herself. It’s not often that I think of last Sunday’s breakfast four days after the fact; but today I am. Respect.

Caterpillar

Adrian Cooke — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 03:53:26 +0000

Cat at night

Project blinkenlights (regional variation)

Adrian Cooke — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 03:48:03 +0000

The main event is visual and auditory in nature

Every year the owners dress their house and yard in this garb. The place is well situated for passersby, most of whom are speeding drivers. But not me and Genie. We pass it on our walks.

Front of the house, which is more like the side

Machine, rail and tree

Adrian Cooke — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:59:57 +0000

“Big Max,” parked at the north end of our bridge

First up we have a machine that might be used in the tearing down and/or building up of bridges, or perhaps in the installation and/or removal of telegraph poles—both are happening right now, and yes, our neighbourhood is a hotbed of activity, you had better believe.

The tracks

Next is a shot of the railway line taken by holding the camera high above my head to get above the fence that doesn’t look like it would save you if you leaned on it but nevertheless usually supplies the necessary psychological reassurance that one will probably get to the other side safely, at least this one time.

My favourite tree on campus

And finally we have a shot of what is probably most accurately described as my favourite tree/built environment combination on campus, some kind of oaky, elmy thing nestled amidst the brutalist CFA structures I walk between every day that remind me of QPAC which in turn is strangely comforting.

The moon tonight

Adrian Cooke — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 03:56:19 +0000

Obligatory fall post

Adrian Cooke — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:44:38 +0000

For your enjoyment, and because Mum asked me to, I present some photos of the fall colours on campus this year.

For those who don’t work at Wesleyan or live in Middletown this shot is taken on Foss Hill, which is kind of the spiritual hub of the university. This is where key events at WesFest, Spring Fling, the zombies game, Feet to the Fire, and soon WesWars (and probably a million other things I’m forgetting) take place. It’s also where the residents of Middletown come with their sleds and their rug rats when it snows good and hard. When I make coffee in the morning I can see the hill from the big window at the end of the hall, with Van Vleck Observatory peeking out of the foliage; it was especially beautiful this morning, though they really need to paint the roof again.^†

If you click through to the gallery you’ll see a few of the shots of Middletown that I took this afternoon from the roof of the Allbritton Center, which used to go by the name “Davenport.” This part of the river valley used to be called Mattabeseck and the surrounding country was called Quinnehtukqut. These names I like. If you’re a fan of Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea trilogy you’ll know what I mean. “Middletown?” well, okay. “Mattabeseck” — there’s power in the old names of things.

† I brought my camera in today to take more photos but the battery died on me after about six clicks. Since this is the second battery and the camera is about seven years old it might soon, finally, be time for me to move on and get something better. And yes, for regular readers of Zero to One-Eighty this aside was for LydiaT.

In Elena’s garden

Adrian Cooke — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 21:18:20 +0000

…everything is illuminated. (It is a very premium garden.)

For the time being

She’s a naughty girl with a bad habit

Adrian Cooke — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 04:32:18 +0000

Genie on snow patrol

She would give Céline a run for her money, too.

For the time being

Adrian Cooke — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 16:59:57 +0000

While walking with Genie at Wadsworth Mansion, just a few weeks ago

Kris recently reflected that:

The stories of old people planting trees, knowing they’ll never see them grown, are lovely for their message of faith in a long future that can’t be claimed. But equally beautiful is the thought of building something for the time being, knowing it may not last out the decade—or the year—or even, quite horribly, the week—and doing so anyway because what there is today matters as much as the possibility of the future.

For most of the time I’ve lived in New England I haven’t had a garden of my own to take care of. But almost from the beginning I noticed how Connecticut residents do exactly what Kris is talking about: every spring they plant flowers that will last for only a few weeks or months. They take it completely for granted, and they take pride in their work. Bulbs, potted plants, garden beds that sprout and then leap into colour. It reminds me of Toowoomba a bit.

Back in Brisbane—where my only prior experience looking after gardens was helping my mum in hers—I know that you can leave a potted plant outside all year long. Here, you can’t, if you want to keep your pot in one piece.

So far my accomplishments in the garden amount to keeping plants trimmed, the grass cut and getting a few geraniums to hang on from the summer until last fall. It was a start, not so much at a garden that persists, but at the habit of working without thinking too much about the future.

Enhance it!

Adrian Cooke — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 16:32:20 +0000

The Devil’s contrails

Elena hates it when they say that in movies and TV shows. There is a finite amount of information in bitmap images. You can’t just keep “enhancing it.” In this case the image is both zoomed (4x) and cropped and enlarged (10x), even though the manufacturer calls the second part a “zoom” function. I want a better lens. Ever since Lydia planted the thought, I am craving an SLR. Contrails look fantastic in winter, especially in this pre-dawn Martian light.

Powder

Adrian Cooke — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 00:14:56 +0000

I just love the pine needles.