Zero to One-Eighty » walks

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.

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.

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.