Archive for the ‘curiosities’ Category
A Beautiful Bit of Honesty: Butte’s Berkeley Pit
The Berkeley Pit is an open pit mine on the edge of Butte that had gobbled up neighborhood after neighborhood for years. In 1982 the mine ceased operation and began filling with water. But not just filling with clean swimming pool water. The water in the pit is highly acidic and so full of minerals that today it (yes, the water itself) is “mined” for copper. It may be a myth that migrating birds die instantly if they land in the water, but vigorous hazing activities include a houseboat that moves around the lake to get birds off the water and to collect those appearing to suffer ill effects (they dump the birds in an on-board five-gallon barrel of fresh water and release them from fresh-water).
Enjoy the view.
Standing on the viewing platform, the scale of the pit is amazing. And the chamber of commerce runs a brave Orwellian soundtrack complete with patriotic, upbeat music that describes all that is going on to clean up the mess and how nobody needs to worry about the toxins seeping into the ground water for a variety of reasons. So just enjoy the view. [Addendum: The level of the water in the pit is carefully monitored so the toxic mess does not seep into the groundwater. The number of people and groups watching the pit is quite amazing. ]
The beautiful bit of honesty came from a resident I spoke with. What was her impression of the Berkeley pit and what did other residents think of it?
“We know we live next to a lake of battery acid.”
No spin. No soundtrack or patriotic music. Just winsome honesty. And let’s get on with life.
###
Do a Dumb Sketch Today
Magnetize Eyeballs with Your Dumb Sketch
As a copywriter, I’ve always prefaced my art or design-related comments with, “I’m no designer, but….” I read a number of design blogs because the discipline fascinates me and I hope for a happy marriage between my words and their graphical setting as they set off into the world.
But artists and designers don’t own art. And I’m starting to wonder why I accede such authority to experts. Mind you, I’m no expert, but just like in the best, most engaged conversations, something sorta magical happens in a dumb sketch. Sometimes words shivering alone on a white page just don’t cut it. Especially when they gang up in dozens and scores and crowd onto a PowerPoint slide in an attempt to muscle their way into a client’s or colleague’s consciousness. Sometimes my words lack immediacy. Sometimes they don’t punch people in the gut like I want them to.
A dumb sketch can do what words cannot.
I’ve come to enjoy sketching lately. Not because I’m a good artist (I’m not). Not because I have a knack for capturing things on paper. I don’t. I like sketching for two reasons:
- Drawing a sketch uses an entirely different part of my brain. Or so it seems. The blank page with a pencil and an idea of a drawing is very different from a blank page and an idea soon to be fitted with a set of words. Sketching seems inherently more fun than writing (remember, I write for a living, so I’m completely in love with words, too). Sketching feels like playing. That sense of play has a way of working itself out—even for as bad an artist as I am. It’s that sense of play that brings along the second reason to sketch.
- Sketches are unparalleled communication tools. It’s true. Talking about a picture with someone is far more interesting than sitting and watching someone read a sentence. Which is boring. Even a very bad sketch, presented to a table of colleagues or clients, can make people laugh and so serve to lighten the mood. Even the worst sketches carry an emotional tinge. People love to see sketches. Even obstinate, ornery colleagues are drawn into the intent of the sketch, so much so that their minds begin filling in the blanks (without them realizing!) and so are drawn into what was supposed to happen with the drawing. The mind cannot help but fill in the blanks.
The best part of a dumb sketch is what happens when it is shown to a group. In a recent client meeting I pulled out my dumb sketches to make a particular point about how this product should be positioned in the market. I could not quite hear it, but I had the sense of a collective sigh around the conference table as they saw pictures rather than yet another wordy PowerPoint slide. In fact, contrary to the forced attention a wordy PowerPoint slide demands, my sketch pulled people in with a magnetism. Even though ugly, it still pulled. Amazing.
###
Try this: Be Ionic, Iconic and Ironic
Disturb Someone Today
The Minneapolis Institute of Arts manages to be ionic (columns), iconic (yes, the columns again) and ironic (colors on columns–really?)
It’s all in the mix. Start with an ancient form: a note, a letter. A poem. An email? Get the form just right and let it carry all it was meant to carry. Then bring it into today with an element that steps outside that form. The MIA does it with colored lights on the ionic pillars with are also iconic. Is the result beautiful? Not exactly. Several of us have thought a lot about whether those lights are right or wrong. We decided they are ironic.
That’s why I’m so fond of the cards turned out by Zeichen press. Old form. Old cold type. I’ve worked with quoins and frames and rollers that spread ink across a platen. Everything about the process shouts “old.” But the messages are anything but old. Their cards disturb even as they console or encourage.
How can you disturb someone’s attention by mixing up an old form with something of today?
###
It Turns Out Time Is Not So Flexible
My Wife Demonstrates Use of a “Clock”
I’ve always joked that I live in a time warp. Time actually moves backwards as I drive to my next meeting (which is not a confession of speeding, please understand).
I am of the tribe who refuses to leave what I’m doing to get to the next thing. In my mind—as I remain at my keyboard—myriad mental time and distance calculations convince me that of course I have plenty of time to get to that meeting. My watch is set ten minutes ahead so I am only five minutes late to things. (That’s a reasonable margin, right?) Of course there will be green lights. Certainly there will be no traffic—I count on it. Naturally I can shower/shave in five minutes and be ready. Absolutely.
As it turns out, my wife is able to use a clock. And she timed my five-minute shower. And then she asked me if I could take a shower and eat breakfast in five minutes.
“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”
“Twenty minutes,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“Yes.”
So, here’s my new deal with the universe: I’ll give myself thirty minutes to shower and eat breakfast. And not just because my wife has had something to say about this for 27+ years. Perhaps peace with Mrs. Kirkistan—in this area—would be useful.
Yes.
I’ll get started right away.
Just let me finish this thought.
###
Image Credit: Ryan Todd via thisisnthappiness
The Republic of Kirkistan is On the Move
Over the next few days, Conversation is an Engine will revisit a few old posts
It’s time to play hooky from work.
###
Image Credit: PBF via thisisn’thappiness
Mark Hartman: When a photographer asks questions
Photography answers look different than, say, a writer’s answers
I’ve long thought the answers we get depend on the questions we ask. But those answers also depend on the tools we use to unearth the answers. Writing is my primary tool. I reach for a sentence or two as I approach any question. It’s why I’m rarely without a pen/paper/smartphone/computer in any life situation. It’s just how I process life.
Some people carry pen and paper everywhere they go.
Some people carry a Hassleblad camera where ever they go.
Like Mark Hartman who spent a month in an isolated, northern region of Iceland. He wanted to explore “how we as humans occupy, exist and relate to our earth and environments.” He also wondered about the “echoes of human presence [that] linger long after we leave it.”
Mr. Hartman’s answers are bright, clear and full of wonder.
See for yourself.
###
Via Lenscratch
Chris Guillebeau & World Domination
The Art of Non-Conformity
I’m halfway through Chris Guillebeau’s “The Art of Non-Conformity” and enjoying it greatly. It’s a very easy read. Even so, Mr. Guillebeau manages to challenge all sorts of commonly accepted ways we wander through life, from corporate culture to the rhetorical jujutsu of the bosses and authorities in our lives to how we decide what is most important. In every case, he invites me to ask my own questions rather than blindly accept whatever is laid before me. But it doesn’t read like a philosophical tract or evangelist’s preachment—it is simply stories from the lives of different non-conformists, which he then applies to the mundane stuff of ordinary, daily life. To surprising ends.
Mr. Guillebeau’s honesty pulls you in and keeps you hooked. He shows successes and failure, which makes the entire project feel more doable.
His book (and blog) place travel high in his own list of life’s important stuff and you cannot help but get the bug yourself. But I also like his ongoing conversation about what success looks like. Maybe success looks like a Porsche. Or maybe it looks like a month in Kuala Lumpur. Or maybe it looks like time to write every day. Or maybe it looks like helping orphans in Africa. Or like time to care for aging parents. But it whatever success looks like, Mr. Guillebeau is certain it is your decision—not anyone else’s.
Which brings me to one his central pivots: the notion of world domination. It’s really a sly way of rejecting the values we receive by osmosis and asking what it is we are really trying to accomplish in life. You dominate the world when you replace and live by your own definitions rather than hefting someone else’s.
Give it a read.
###
Mini: One Brand’s View of Heaven
I’ll have the feather treatment, please.
Naturally you see the product this way, too. Don’t you?
###
Church: Neither Benign Social Club nor Political Hack
One Approach to Juxtapose
This is one concept as I work out the marketing messages for Juxtapose: How to Build a Church That Counters Culture.
If browsing in Barnes and Noble, would you stop and handle a book that looked like that?
###
Image Credit: Unknown. Do you know?
conversation is an engine 