misc.

Sequential art (or, how I spent the week after Thanksgiving)

Well, maybe “art” is too much to claim, but this was last week’s craft project, anyway. It’s called “Modern Windsor Rocking Chair.” (No subtitle.)

All 10 of the back pieces were a fresh-cut white oak log on Monday, and like the arms and seat — red oak and pine, respectively — were shaped by hand. The arm and leg spindles are maple and a few of the pins are poplar.

My hands are still sore, but we have a new place to sit and I’m amazed at what’s possible in seven days. Long days, for sure, but it all came together. Plenty of finishing work to do still, but it’s already an actual chair you can sit in, and is quite comfortable.

Luke at LongLiveWood.org is an excellent and patient teacher, and attracts students from all over the world to take his classes. And well he should. Recommended!

Sitting at the shaving horse, making big pieces of wood smaller.

The uprights, rough shaped but not yet steam bent. (A draw knife, my best friend for the week, is off to the right.)

And now the back/headrest, also rough shaped and unbent. (I was bending, though!)

Layout. I tended to get too precious with this, which was a bit of a waste of time given what comes next, but you can't carve the engineer+librarian out of me. — Layout. I tended to get too precious with this, which was a bit of a waste of time given what comes next, but you can’t carve the engineer+librarian out of me.

You start by making a place for your butt... Note all the holes, all of which are at weird double angles: 26.5deg, 17deg, etc. Drilling freestyle was THRILLING, but did use a laser, a bevel gauge, and a prayer (in order of tech sophistication) to do so w/o a jig. Got 'em all within tolerance, to my shock. — You start by making a place for your butt… Note all the holes, all of which are at weird double angles: 26.5deg, 17deg, etc. Drilling freestyle was THRILLING, but we did use a laser, a bevel gauge, and a prayer (in order of tech sophistication) to do so w/o a jig. Got ’em all within tolerance, to my shock.

7/8" down at its deepest, swooping up. — 7/8″ down at its deepest, swooping up.

A travisher and a scorp. (Not shown: spokeshaves.)

There are the spoke shaves! And a kinda sorta seat shape.

Okay, I'm done. (Okay, I'm not.) — Okay, I’m done. (Okay, I’m not.)

Holy #$%&, they fit and are vaguely symmetrical!

Armrest blanks. As with a few other parts, the rough shaping was done on a bandsaw (which I'm lousy at). Unlike other parts, you cut these along two sides, taping the pieces back together after the first cut so you can end up with a piece that's curved in two dimensions. Again, harrowing. — Armrest blanks. As with a few other parts, the rough shaping was done on a bandsaw (which I’m lousy at). Unlike other parts, you cut these along two sides, taping the pieces back together after the first cut so you can end up with a piece that’s curved in two dimensions. Again, harrowing.

Kinda sorta how we got to the previous step. These aren't my pieces. The tear out there caused concern for one of the other students, but as with so many things, our teacher Luke said "Don't WORRY about this. It'll be fine, you'll see." (We did worry, but we also did see in the end.) — Kinda sorta how we got to the previous step. These aren’t my pieces. The tear out there caused concern for one of the other students, but as with so many things, our teacher Luke said “Don’t WORRY about this. It’ll be fine, you’ll see.” (We did worry, but we also did see in the end.)

Arms shaped, drilled, and spindles fitted.

The uneven, blocky, square, ugly but now curved back spindles.

Not something you'd want against your back. — Not something you’d want against your back.

And 30 (or so) minutes later, something you might be okay with resting against.

Fast forward through more bandsawing, dimensioning to 1/1000", and sanding to an exact 10degree bevel, the rockers are now on and pinned. (I didn't take many photos of the final assembly. Things happen fast once you're gluing.) I promise that there was more harrowing drilling from underneath — you really needed a good spotter for that, since the headrest isn't much larger than the drill holes... ...and at this point, Luke's "It'll be fine" gave way to "Don't mess this up, because I can't help you recover from a mistake here." Thanks. — Fast forward through more bandsawing, dimensioning to 1/1000″, and sanding to an exact 10degree bevel, the rockers are now on and pinned. (I didn’t take many photos of the final assembly. Things happen fast once you’re gluing and wedging.) I promise that there was more harrowing drilling from underneath — you really needed a good spotter for that, since the headrest isn’t much larger than the drill holes…
…and at this point, Luke’s “It’ll be fine” gave way to him saying “Don’t mess this up, because I can’t help you recover from a mistake here.”
Thanks.

All of these pieces have to go in at the exact same time, so you torque and bend and squeak to fit. Have I said harrowing before?

Again with the Holy &^%$! They fit and are aligned.

Again, fast forward. This time all the way home, with all the spindles glued in the bottom, slotted in the top, wedges driven into every support, and pins added to the head rest.

NATURALIST: How many endings? Only one.

One of the biggest challenges of adapting E.O. Wilson’s Naturalist (available Nov. 10, but you can pre-order it now!), was in picking the right spot to end. He had, as I recall, three good endings in his book, but for the graphic novel adaptation we didn’t have the space. So I had to pick one, and I didn’t pick the same last lines as he used.

This made me nervous. As a self-taught comics guy, I didn’t (and shouldn’t!) feel qualified to edit a writer like him, a world famous scientist with two Pulitzer Prizes.

But my experience with Ray Bradbury had prepared me to do this, and conversations with my friend and collaborator Leland Myrick did too.

You can read my Ray Bradbury story here (it’s long), but I can summarize what Leland taught me succinctly: sometimes you have to think of comics as poetry. Efficiency and precision in your choice of inked line can produce the same effect as a poem’s concise yet expansive choice of words.

I’m not going to tell you here what I landed on for the closing scene, and last line, of this new look at E.O. Wilson’s life, but I’m proud of what we did, and grateful that Professor Wilson (he says I can call him Ed, but…) recognized that sometimes the best ending doesn’t always appear on the last page, and that inspiration often speaks softly.

Frank Sinatra and Stephen Hawking

If you come and hear me talk about the Hawking book—look, there’s an Events link right here on the site!—you might hear me refer to Gay Talese’s famous (justifiably so!) piece “Frank Sinatra Has a Cold”. Here’s a link to an annotated version of this excellent essay.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do, and that you can learn why I like it by coming to one of my book talks!

No regrets

The Who in Detroit — Our view, photo by Kat

I didn’t leap at the chance to see The Who here in Detroit. I’m not a big concert-goer—crowds, decibels, cost, and opening bands all make me think “Nah, I’ll just listen to the album instead.” I’m not proud to say that I often get bored at even good shows, and as my mind wanders I wonder when it’s going to end and please, I’m tired and I have to work tomorrow so I want to go home now so no encore.

There are exceptions, and performers who meant a lot to me during certain periods of my life, but that’s mostly true of solo artists like Lyle Lovett and Aimee Mann. Arena rock, though? It only took a few shows (the Police and U2 back in the day) to make me sure I didn’t need that sort of thing in my life any more.

But…The Who. I started listening to them in the 1970s, via WLS, 89 on your AM dial all night long. I’ve never stopped. But, these days Daltrey and Townshend are all that’s left and is that enough? And they’re…well, they’re old. And because I now know more than John “Records truly is my middle name” Landecker ever told me through my transistor radio about their complicated relationship to each other and touring, that makes them less like the monolithic presence they were to me when I was a kid. (Yes, that was a “Who’s Next” joke.)

So when I saw they were coming to Detroit I said, out loud, to my wife. “Not interested. What’s the point?”

And then I thought about it some more, and read more about the show and how they were working with a symphony orchestra and that this might be the we-really-mean-it-this-time last tour together and I thought about Douglas Adams’ best book, Last Chance to See. And I realized this was probably it for me, and if I didn’t I’d regret it as much as my wife regrets skipping a chance to see Zappa, her favorite artist, when she had a chance.

Long story short, I went. K came with me, even though she’s emphatically not a fan, and neither of us were bored for a moment. Daltrey and Townshend were technically superb, both musically and in the way they put together a show that played to their strengths and mitigated any weaknesses age might have dealt their voices or bodies. When the music demanded their youthful power Daltrey could still deliver a full-volumed and anguished prayer and Townshend could still deliver a series of chords that started and ended with his arm straight above his head. The hair stood up on my arms and neck during more than one number. It was emotional and inspiring in ways the disaffected youths that we all were—or in my case, pretended to be—would have scoffed at as a teen. This is not going gentle into that good night. As Townshend said at one point, “I fucking hate this. But I’m really good at it.” Maybe that’s about playing live and touring or how he and Daltrey don’t communicate well. Maybe they don’t, sort of, in some contexts…but it’s obvious they like being good together. And they were very good together in Detroit.

They didn’t play an encore, and I wanted one.

A new site, and its background image

Hi! After a long hiatus from blogging and site updating, we’re back with both…and now at least the site will be responsive. (I’ll try too!) I hope you like it, and can find stuff, and that it works well for all your G.T. Labs and science comics needs. I think it will for mine. Many thanks to my friend Jane for getting me here.

Of course a website refresh isn’t newsworthy at this point in history. It’s not like we’re living in the world of The Americans, where “ARPANET” is invoked like it’s a magical and mysterious thing. Which it is, if you think about it for even a second. (And for the worst cross-over ever, imagine Harry Potter sneaking onto that show and yelling Arpa Net, causing all the mainframe tape drives to spin out of control.) But it’s also mundane and commonplace too.

So what remains that’s magical and mysterious while also being the very definition of mundane and commonplace? Quantum theory! And that’s where the new background image comes in. This is the rendering of Einstein’s clock-in-a-box as it appears in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp (1949). No credit for the artist, but I infer from the text that it was commissioned by Bohr himself, and as a collector, that would be a drawing I’d love to have the original for.

It illustrates a thought experiment he posed to stump Niels Bohr and his fellow quantum theorists in Einstein’s ongoing effort to demonstrate, once and for all, that this quantum stuff was nonsense. The bunk. Just Plain Wrong.

It almost worked.

Bohr had dispatched most of Einstein’s previous objections with relative ease, but this one made him sweat. Here’s how the scene plays out in Suspended in Language, which you can buy right here on this site, or from great booksellers everywhere.

(Sorry/not sorry about the EPR cliffhanger!)

Lyle Lovett, Public Radio, and Nuclear Engineering (sort of)

It’s Not Big It’s Large (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Most of my last year working for United Engineers and Constructors was spent in Syracuse, NY. And Oswego. I enjoyed some things about that phase, which was the tail-end of my nuclear engineering career — the Syracuse Speed Skating Club and living on an expense account, mostly — but I didn’t love being on the road 8-10 months of each year, which is why it was the tail-end.

Not that I loved living in Philadelphia all that much, either. It’s a great town, but I just wasn’t a big city person any more. Visiting is excellent…I spent most of a day in Chicago a couple of weeks ago just walking around and looking at buildings and imagining eating at all the hole-in-the wall restaurants I passed. But the density of cars and people (too high) and trees (too low) always makes me glad I live in a small city in Michigan, minutes away from farms and forests.

Philadelphia did have WXPN, though…88.5 on your FM dial. That and WRTI (90.1) were the first public radio stations I consciously listened to. WXPN in particular introduced me to Bob Edwards, Sylvia Poggioli, Carl Kassell, and a metric ton of great music, and it’s the first NPR affiliate I volunteered at. This was back when stations stuck volunteers in a small room with actual telephones with actual twisty cords and handsets dials and allowed strangers to take Visa and Mastercard numbers from other strangers so they could make next year’s budget.

Because United Engineers wanted me at work at 8 every morning, I volunteered for the early phone shift during Michaela Majoun’s morning show. It was her first year at XPN, and she was fantastic. (She’s still there; she’s probably still fantastic.) So I got up well before dawn and went to the University of Pennsylvania’s campus and didn’t commit any credit card fraud and had a great time inside an actual radio station.

As I left, I stopped at the water fountain to get a drink and while leaning over and slurping I saw a pair of pointy and heavily tooled leather cowboy boots out of the corner of my eye. They weren’t mine — I wore very plain brown ones when I was working at the Nine Mile Point nuke plant, and none at all with my three piece suit at the home office in Philly — so they caught my attention. I lifted my head from the fountain and looked up and then further up and still further up and there was Lyle Lovett’s unmistakeable face and further up still was Lyle Lovett’s unmistakeable hair. So I did what comes naturally: I stammered. “I-I really really liked your latest album.” He smiled, said thank you, got a drink of water himself (from th-th-the same fountain!) and then went into the studio to be charming with Michaela Majoun.

You were expecting more, right? Sorry. But I was expecting much less from that day, so it was 100% worth getting up at 5am for.

All this because we saw Lyle Lovett in concert a few days back, an anniversary present to ourselves. Almost three hours of great music, and as we left the Michigan Theater via a rarely-used exit we found ourselves in the loading area backstage. There, just past the bass player putting away his standup, and after thanking him and the cellist (yes, really, a cellist) for the great performance and picking up a discarded set list which I’ve used to recreate the concert as a playlist for Kat…there Lyle Lovett was, again, taking a photo and chatting with Jeff Daniels.

Nowhere near as close as public radio got me. But close enough.

He’s still really tall.

misc.

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