Ploafmaster General

There's a bit of British English slang that this Yank would like to see adopted in The States: faff. As in, "havin' a faff", "faffin' about", and so on. It’s a delightful way to talk about wasting time, messing around, or a pointless task.

It’s Wednesday. The world is garbage. But you can bless the rains down in Africa for 12 straight minutes if you want to take your mind off things for a while.

I remember, in the folly of my teenage years, trying to create my own catchphrase. I come from the Jersey Shore where, like many coastal towns, you wore surf wear even if you didn't really surf. Billabong, Quicksilver, Rusty, Ocean Pacific, etc. I was particularly fond of Quicksilver. So fond, in fact, that I would tell more than one person, on more than one occasion, that "Quicksilver is my sauce". You know, because I wanted to be covered in it? Complemented by it? I dunno. I was already a super nerdy outsider, so I don't know why I though this would do me any favors.

I’ve enjoyed the gentle, entertaining, informative videos from James Hoffmann about coffee over the past year, but his last couple of videos have been a bit of a departure that have been no less informative and entertaining than the norm. Just today, for example, a video about cultural appropriation, colonization, inclusivity, and some oft-overlooked ways to make coffee better for everybody, and not just white folks in Europe or North America:

Hoffmann doesn't even show up in this video except as mentioned by Ārām Se's Raghunath Rajaram to thank him for including the video on this channel. It’s an excellent video about what Westerners often take for granted, the hegemony of US/UK influence on the world of specialty coffee, and how colonization and exclusion need fixing in more than just the farming and production side of the industry.

Last week's video also kept Hoffmann out of the picture by sharing a production from Gilly Brewing Co. in Stone Mountain, GA about their mostly coffee-based mixed drinks (non-alcoholic, I believe). These drinks are meant to tell stories based on a combination of the writings of James Baldwin and the book of James from the Bible:

It’s been nice to see Hoffmann showcase people in the coffee world that represent non white and/or European populations, and to essentially sideline himself. I don't think he’s a hero, or anything, but I like seeing somebody use the platform they have to shine a light on folks with no platform or at least a smaller one. White male YouTube channels dominate in so many topics (photography, maker channels, etc.), and I’d like to see similar actions from other creators to redirect attention toward and showcase people that don't usually get equal representation.

I hope Hoffmann himself shares more videos like this, or at least continues to direct his considerable audience to other specialty coffee folks (or at least YouTubers) outside the dominant white male cohort.

P.S. There are YouTube channels out there in a number of topics run by women, Black folks, non-US/EU people, but you have to actually look for them (most of the time - Marques Brownlee is pretty easy to find because he is a FORCE). Sometimes that can be dispiriting given just how many mediocre white dudes think people want to hear/see their work in video form. Like, seriously, the number of white guys with half-researched tips-and-tricks-based photography channels makes me want to yell. But if you actively look to expand the makeup of the producers you follow, you can find great stuff (e.g. Jess Hobbs).

For whatever its really worth, I consistently score as an extrovert on Meyers-Briggs tests. I've taken the short and long forms many times since high school, as recently as my early 30s. It's pretty common for folks to conflate extroversion with an outgoing personality, and for most of my life I had both. I wasn't really the life of the party or the center of attention, but I loved meeting new people, introducing myself, and generally being in the thick of of group, talking and listening about whatever.

Of course extroversion doesn’t really denote an outgoing nature; I find, rather, that I’m far less likely to do anything without somebody else to share the experience. As my college years gave way to my 20s, and the friendly, open atmosphere of my friends gave way to the corporate world, the outgoing side of my personality mostly stayed behind at Virginia Commonwealth University.

I’m pretty sure this all started once I was in a professional environment. I didn’t know what vocational consequences I’d face for my eccentricity and, coupled with my almost pathological people-pleaser nature, I intentionally held back my full self in the work place for several years. It’s a bit harder to have relaxed, social interactions in the workplace if you (rightly or wrongly) worry about being too much of a goofball or a nerd. But my particular work environment did little to break me out of this state either. I worked in software, so it was mostly white men of widely varying ages and backgrounds talking about women and/or sports all the time. I didn’t want to talk about other women because I was happy in my marriage, and I while I liked NFL football back then, it wasn’t the dominant topic in my life.

It took years to understand what seems so collectively obvious now: men (talking mainly about cis-het white men here) mostly care about objectifying women, sports, and work. Or at least those seem to be the only things most men are willing to talk about. I’ve observed this with so many casual interactions over the years that my social reservations have become self-reinforcing. Meeting folks at my wife’s high school reunion? Sports and work. Co-workers at work functions (or my wife’s work functions)? Sports. Work. The various women at the event. Even these days where most new guys I meet are dad of my kids’ friends, it’s the same. “You following [insert sports topic]?” Or more frequently “What do you do?” Mercifully, I haven’t had yet been asked what I think about any hot moms on the playground.

Sure, I’ve been fortunate to meet new people over the years, make friends, have a healthy social life. I've even been fortunate enough to find some real friendship at my prior and current jobs. But my once youthful ease I had around anybody and everybody has all but disappeared. I wouldn’t consider it replaced by shyness, per se. I'm not anxious about meeting new people. I just tend to pessimistically assume that most new interactions with other men are going to be another round of that 3-square conversational bingo card.

I recognize how it may sound like I’m self-limiting my pool of potential interaction to folks like me—white dudes. For better or for worse, though, as a parent of two young kids in an IT job, most of the time I get to interact with other adults in a spontaneous way is at school functions, the playground or park, or at work events for myself or my wife—all before the pandemic of course. In a mostly heteronormative culture with plenty of toxic masculinity and many good reasons for women not to want to talk to men, most of these social settings tend to divide along gender lines like a middle school dance.

I’m willing to bet many of the folks I meet would really rather talk about something cool they read, or a weird hobby, or how much time they waste participating in some obscure fandom. Maybe they’re bursting to share about music they’re writing, or what bothers them about local politics, or where they hope to visit someday when the kids are older. Unfortunately, years of the wrong kinds of experience and my own bad habits of overthinking and projecting have put up such guardrails that I’ve started avoiding opportunities for these interactions. I occasionally wish I was still outgoing in the same way that I wish I’d kept up with playing the piano; I don’t really believe I can recapture that spark, but I miss the personal comfort and fulfillment that came along for the ride.

Well that's a lot of gloomy words to match the gray weather outside. At least I’m sure that’s how it comes across; I don’t really dwell on it. I have a generally happy, healthy life and I don’t feel like I’m wanting for much (other than perhaps more sleep every now and then). But this has been on my mind for a while and I've been chewing over how to write about it. If writing is thinking, than this is me thinking back on and processing perhaps one of the more significant shifts in my life over the years.

I was sitting on the toilet, playing sudoku to escape the kids, when I remembered the word "pilcrow". Most of us probably recognize it even if we don't know or remember the name. It’s the typographic symbol for a paragraph and has taken a number of fun forms over the centuries (where it originated as a marking to separate thoughts, before folks visually separated them into modern paragraphs).

Years ago I followed a link from Johnny Hugel to a now-Internet-Archived recipe for super quick and easy mac and cheese. The secret here was using shmancy molecular gastronomy ingredient called sodium citrate, or "sour salt", which untangles some proteins to prevent the cheese from breaking into an oily mess. The recipe has shown itself to be quick, easy, and delicious. Most of all, the recipe is easily adaptable, particularly if you’re the sort who ate and loved a lot of Hamburger Helper growing up.

For years now, roughly once a month, I make the quick-mac in one pan while browning some meat (usually ground beef, though it’s also worked great with Beyond or Impossible beef substitute) in another. I tend to go for some sort of flavor profile on the meat (Tex/Mex flavors are popular, but the options are only limited by your pantry and spice cabinet) and bring it all together in the end. It’s a favorite with my kids, and I'm craving the leftovers from last night right-the-heck now.

If you try this, just make sure sodium citrate is labeled "food grade"!

At seven years old, my daughter is thoughtful enough to come up with an idea for a birthday gift that I truly love. Not just in the "aww, my kid gave me a gift" sort of way, which is still valid and wonderful. I mean in the "wow, I LOVE this, it is something I have always wanted" category. My wife helped take it over the top, but essentially, my daughter wanted to get me a pair of Converse All Stars for my birthday at the beginning of the month. My wife suggested making it a custom pair. I think you probably figured that out from the photo above.

I was super happy with Converse's configurator tool, and I'm pretty impressed with how accurately the preview during the entire build process represented the real, final product on my feet. They cost a bit more than an "off the rack" pair of Chucks and, for that reason, I’ve never really pulled the trigger on buying a pair. But I have played with the configurator many times in recent years. My daughter's gift idea was the perfect excuse to finally go for it :-D

Last night, just as I was about to climb in bed, I started saying <<agents provocateurs>> in a horrendous, overly-dramatic French accent. For whatever reason I had it in my head that this phrase referred to spies, but nope. These are people who stir up trouble in order to incriminate or discredit other folks. Where the hell in left field did this one come from?

I’ve been growing my hair for the entire pandemic. Rather than keep my normal, short haircut, I’ve even requested a mere light trim and shaping once I resumed monthly visits to the barber shop. My hair has long ago passed my own personal record, and today I decided to have a little fun with it for Halloween.

My wife and I knocked down the sides and back of my hair quite a bit with some clippers and collaborated on attempting to recreate the poster for David Lynch's Eraserhead. I didn't quite get it with the lighting (I'm an amateur, and I also suspect a 3rd light source), but I love the result, particularly the way the water spray mist worked out behind me. Both lights caught it perfectly, and it really adds some dimension to the final shot.

It’s a twofer this morning. I had "lachrymose" and "sanguine" bumping around my noggin when I woke up earlier desired. But I already know the meaning of these words: lachrymose means tearful, from the Latin word for tear (the same root that gives us "lacrimal gland" or tear-producing glands). Sanguine, on the other hand, feels almost opposite in certain contexts. I tend to think of sanguine in its hopeful usage, but it’s referring to the flush, reddish color of blood (imagine the blood, or "color" draining from a hopeless face), and comes from the Latin for the same.

This got me thinking about other words derived from body parts that have emotional or behavioral meanings beyond their simple descriptive denotations. Take "bilious", for example, which may refer simply to the digestive fluid produced by the liver. More colloquially, however, a bilious person is considered to be thoroughly unlikeable (see also the similarly used "splenetic" and "dyspeptic").

The word nerd in me would LOVE to hear any other such body words. Share 'em if ya got 'em.

This time it was “perspicacious”, rattling around my tired mind well before sunrise, after my intestines woke me for a ride in the porcelain bus.

Perspicacious sounds like something Foghorn Leghorn would toss out in one of his monologues, but it means essentially the ability to see through the surface to what’s real. Webster’s entry has a little too much fun differentiating between perspicacious and its synonyms, but it’s a nifty, not-so-little word that’s been around for a few hundred years.

Okay, so sometimes its not just a 3 dollar word that pops into my head. Sometimes its a song from 24 years ago. The video is unremarkable (though the kids are adorable), but the song still rocks pretty hard. I feel like '96 was one of the last good years for "alternative" rock before it ceased to be an alternative to anything.

I’ve been watching Ted Lasso (have you been watching Ted Lasso? You should be watching Ted Lasso) recently and at the beginning of an episode I watched last night, the titular Lasso gets hung up on the word "plan". After he says the word a few too many times he feels like it starts to lose its meaning. When he asks his friend/assistant coach about his experience, he’s reminded that it’s called "semantic satiation", whereby a repeated word becomes abstract noise to a listener.

I'm always here for nerdy, linguistic trivia thrown into the middle of my emotional sports comedies.

It’s week 2 of virtual schooling for my second grader in Richmond, Virginia. There's a lot of bubbling consternation among the parents of kids in my daughter's class. Whether it’s the length of the day or the frustration with certain assignments, folks have a lot to say. I don't think it’s perfect by any stretch, and my child's teacher is the source of some issues (extreme technology deficit at the top of the list), but I'm still cautiously optimistic. Every day the students improve their mute button etiquette. The teacher finds clever ways around her own technological limitations. The students respond to and engage in the classwork. I'm super lucky to have had my daughter tell me this morning that she likes her teacher, and she has been generally positive on the experience so far. We're privileged in that regard, and I recognize that many students may be struggling along with their teachers for a variety of reasons (different needs, home/care center environments, etc.).

I have a hypothesis, however. I think a new and terrible source of anxiety for parents is our sudden and complete view into our children's school day. Last year, like every year before, we sent our kids to school and hoped to get a few sentences out of them about their day when they returned in the afternoon. We didn't witness the teacher's instruction or see any classwork until the results came home. We haven't been in the classrooms witnessing challenges, disruptions, and any other issues that might surface.

Except now we are. Or at least folks like my wife and me who are largely white and/or privileged. Folks like us who have the money/time/job flexibility to have one or more parents working from home, lending assistance to our kids while they learn remotely. I don't think it’s a coincidence that our superintendent has received most of his feedback on the schedule from parents in the West End and Northside, home to most of the white families in system, with typically higher incomes. I don't presume that there are no issues for students in other parts of town, but most of the vocal frustration of schedule and operation isn't coming from the Southside or East End.

Did you have great teachers/school years throughout your entire education? If you did, you’re super lucky and I envy you. When I think back on my own second grade year I recall the very worst teacher of my primary education. She was actively hostile toward me (though I never shut up…)! My daughter's learning circumstances are not ideal because, well, GESTURES BROADLY, but her teacher is fine. She'll be fine.

I'm sympathetic to the parents and children that are dealing with real educational, emotional, neurological, social, or other issues in this situation. Every accommodation should be made to ensure equitable education for all students across socioeconomic strata and different levels of ability. But that’s not most of the families. I think a great deal of parents could benefit from weaning themselves off of active monitoring of their kids' virtual school days. Our kids are smart! Let's back away (at a reasonable pace) and let them develop self-sufficiency. Perhaps our collective blood pressure will lower.

Today is a return to school, such as it is. My daughter attends a school district that is 100% virtual through at least the first half of the school year. My son is starting pre-kindergarten and does NOT want to listen to what his mom or me tell him. So in the best interest of both of them, we’ve taken the calculated risk of sending him back to his in-person school for pre-k. The faculty and staff at his school are great about wearing masks, and the drop-off/pick-up protocol is terrific. But it’s still a bunch of little kids who won't be able to stay apart because they're four years old.

His absence from the house, however, will allow our second grader the peace, quiet, and brain space to focus on this weird new virtual schooling world. She loves to learn, actually enjoys reading, math, and science, so we hope that the quiet in our hose allows her to adjust while my wife and I get to our own work. We’ll see...

Tomorrow is my daughter’s 7th birthday and, in these damnable corona-times, that means no party or even a hangout with her friends. Call it overcompensating, call it one last hurrah for the summer, but we decided to take a short family trip to the beach for the occasion.

Takeout dining and easy outdoor social distancing at the beach make this a lower-risk trip, or at least that’s how I’m rationalizing it. Either way, the change in scenery and the smell of the ocean ought to be good for us all before diving into virtual schooling on Tuesday.

Happy birthday, kiddo.

My friend Trey shared a screen grab from the HBO series Lovecraft Country in a photography-oriented Slack channel. He wondered what type of camera was used by one of the lead characters. I have not seen the series (never been an HBO subscriber), but I'm given to understand photography plays an important part in the show.

I was told the show takes place in the 1950s, and I figured the production designers were likely to have used an American (or at least American branded) camera. Ansco? Argus? Kodak? I zoomed in a bit to get some more details...

• It’s a "folding" camera; the whole thing doesn't fold, but there's a door that opens (under her fingers) and the lens pops out on bellows.
• There's a cable running from the flash to the lens at the bottom.
• There's a little black semicircle on the right side of the lens barrel.
• There's a knob/winding dial of sorts at the top of the camera body, and it’s not very thick.
• You can see a small viewfinder window above the lens, part of a solid top plate of the camera.
• You can also see some kind of metal and textured protrusion on the far right edge of the camera.

All of those factors and the ever helpful Camera-Wiki.org led me to the Retina Ia, a camera manufactured in Germany for Kodak AG starting in 1951. Moreover, the camera in the TV show is most likely using one of the 50mm f/3.5 lenses based on the black ring around the lens opening, as opposed to the 50mm f/2.8 pictured at the top of this post. Obsessive nerd success!

If the season wraps up with continued plaudits, I'll see about watching some episodes. I can't help but want to check out a show that pays such homage to greats like Gordon Parks while making photography itself an important element of the show.

When he wants to get real chill he’s CBD Grey.
When he shops for knives on TV at 3 AM, he’s QVC Grey.
When it's Halloween he’s Heebie-Jeebies Grey.
When he buys underwear rep'd by Telly Savalas, he’s BVD Grey.
When he makes a clear logical argument he’s Q.E.D. Grey.

(with apologies and admiration)