Monday, March 31, 2008

The Jam Session


This past weekend, I finally had the opportunity to “jam” with my good friend Scott. It has been the better part of a year since we were last able to get together to practice something that means a lot to both of us: music.

A rough start was had at rekindling the musical bonds that were once fluid executions, but after several songs we started making our way through the cobwebs that dotted our talents at this specific performance.

In the middle of our warm-up song, a tiny voice emerged from the ceiling vent for the central air system…

“Dad? …. What are you doing?”

It was Scott’s daughter Lilly. Each of us had thoughtfully built our “practice rooms” to incorporate a near ton of insulating material to reduce the noise levels throughout our homes, but had never thought about the issue of duct based noised transfer. Obviously, our practice session had come booming into her room, and she had got out of bed and ran to the vent and was eavesdropping.

“We’re playing practicing music” Scott replied to his daughter as he stood facing the ceiling underneath the vent looking like he was having a conversation with his creator.

“Ok… who is down there with you?”

“Mr. Jay is.”

“Are you playing the guitar, Daddy?”

“Yes.”

“And is Mr. Jay playing the drums?”

“Yes, he is. Do you want us to play something for you?”

“Yes, you can play something.”

At this point we were both laughing so hard at the situation we almost missed Lilly counting out the start of the song for us.

“One. Two. Three. Now play.”

After the next full song, we heard nothing for our vent based audience and had hoped that our melodies had lulled her to sleep.

It is my hope that we can continue these practice sessions and cement our abilities into something approaching (and even exceeding) our previous capabilities from previous lives that stood on stages playing before the crowded bars of our yesteryears.

At least for now, I’m happy to be playing again…

jp

Friday, March 28, 2008

Photos From This Morning

The drive to work this morning was like a stroll through a world coated in gold colored glass. An almost perceivable delay in time made the world slow to a crawl as light etched its way through space and floated down through ice coated branches displaying a gift of jeweled glitters everywhere you looked.

Here are some captures of those wonderful moments in the form of pictures.

jp

Filibuster

Normally, you can’t get me to shut up when it comes to making a posting on here, but for the past few days, I’ve been in a slump. We’ve had dreadfully wonderful weather (we got more snow last night, yay!), but with so many things happening at home, I seem to be a miss to actually find something to talk about.

Jocie took her first spill down the stairs the other night when it was just me and the kids at, so I’ve got nobody else to blame but my own incompetence. Joey was a witness to the accident and loudly announced the event while it was happening. Jessamyn was my “First Responder” and arrived at her patient’s side just moments after she fell and provided triage in the form of hugs. She, like most babies that are built like rubber and have plenty of extra cushioning, was just fine and only needed a little comforting before she was crawling away and onto the next thing that caught her eye.

Jessamyn will be taking her father to their first ‘Daddy and Daughter’ dance this coming Saturday for her school. She already has her dress picked out, and her mother was nice enough to purchase a matching tie for her “date.”…. (now I’ve just got to pick a restaurant to take her to for our “first date”).

Joey is plodding down his now consistent path of perpetual engineerdom as he creates new Lego manifestations on a nightly basis.

Jenny has been busy doing homework and getting ready for a presentation for her class that happened last night. She was nice enough to share some of its content with me when she brought home a video by ‘Jane Elliot.’ This amazing woman made national headlines by teaching her class of 3rd graders about racism in 1968 (she did this the day after Martin Luther King died) by creating a mock supremacy arbitrarily based on eye color within her classroom. The PBS video about how she did this was amazing to me as she transforms a group of best friends into racists in the matter of fifteen minutes. In addition to persuading youths, she also has a “workshop” version named “Blue Eyed” that is catered towards the adult with similar results.

Me? Well, I’m still the same. I can’t wait for summer so I can open the pool and enjoy my “back yard vacation.” Really, I’d just like Mother Nature to make up her mind and bring on spring or dump more snow and leave the temps below 30 so I can go skiing with my kids.

jp

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Snowy Drive

These wonderful pictures were taken on my route home from the office during last week's snow storm that dumped over twelve inches on the Midwest.

jp


Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Joey and his Pirate Friends

Exhausted parents tired from a long week slip downstairs towards a basement sanctum at shortly after 10pm last Friday evening to find some solace in watch whatever Netflix has pushed at them from their queue.

Unbeknownst to them is the fact that their now five year old son has silently escaped from his bedroom to play in what was a previously clean playroom.

After probably an hour’s worth of non-parental sanctioned play, he decides to leave his paradise and return to the comforts of his now cold bed, leaving behind a scene that describes a band of pirates that have found land and are laughing as they sit around a campfire just outside a skull faced cave.

One of the deck hands, which obviously stayed behind on the black sailed pirate ship, is busy chasing a skeleton shaped ghost up the windward side of the ships rigging.

An empty cannon sits on the shore facing the sea and nearby a dinghy is perched for a quick escape, should one be needed by the shore based crew.

This wonderful story was ours to behold and was set out in the darkness of the children’s playroom by our son Joey.

jp

Monday, March 24, 2008

Aunts Jennifer and Jacqueline


This past weekend, the kids aunts came to visit for Easter.

jp

Thank you for the Snow!!!

A freak March snowstorm has dumped 12+ inches of snow on our Midwestern town... and I couldn't be happier.

jp

Jocie's Blanket Box

In yet another unending effort towards proclaiming household domination on cuteness, Jocie stole a drawer from her older sister’s Build-A-Bear Closet, tossed her favorite “blankie” inside, and spent several hours pushing it around in front of her this past weekend.

Bewildering me with her amazing grasp of comprehension and knowledge placement, she even went into her room, pushed her box up to her crib and through the crib’s slots, sorted around though quilts and stuffed animals until she found a second “blankie.”

jp






What is it worth?

Several years ago, I attended a formal ceremony with the Fire Department for the funeral of a retired firefighter who had served long before I had become a member. I regret to use the term ‘routine’ when referring to these events, but they do happen with a disheartening frequency in this service, so when I use the term ‘formal ceremony’ to describe this, it is only because this happens quite a few times during the year.

Of the many funerals I’ve attended, there was one that really touched me and changed the way I’ve looked at my family and the life that I lead.

As the life of the man was described in great detail during the ceremony, I realized that I had neither known him personally nor known anything about the life had lived.

He had lived the life of a professional musician from an early age when Nashville artists picked him up due to his amazing steel guitar (also known as ‘lap steel’) playing. He was given an amazing gift with this ability that brought him to stages around the world as a star player. Next to the pulpit stood his instrument in silent tribute to this part of his life and the gift he had also given with his talents to this church.

He had toured with some amazing names that have dotted the country music landscape of the 50’s, 60’s, and 70’s. Names that are famous even to this day were listed as his accolades.

His life changed when he met a woman and fell in love. He decided to settl down, have children, and leave behind the life of a travelling musician to become a faithful husband and devoted father.

It was at this point that he decided to join the fire department, which has long symbolized the lighthouse of stability in communities and within the lives of its members. This was a perfect match that allowed him to be with his kids as they grew up while also giving back to the community.

He was well loved by all the members of the department and several of my older colleagues gave to the eulogy in the form of stories of their past experiences.

His musical abilities did not fade with his new life as passing musicians would often get him to come out and play in nearby venues during the years. He also headed up the band at his local church.

The most amazing and impacting portion of the service came at the end when each of his four children read aloud letters that each had written to him after he had passed.

It is in these letters that not only did he find immortality but that my own realizations of my life came to fruition.

As each of his children read, I realized just how much this man had impacted the lives of his children. Not only did they love their father, as you would expect from a close family like this, but they loved their relationship with their parents so much so that after each one of them had grown up and gone to college, they all had purposely moved back home, bought property, and build their own homes in the area that surrounded their parents. They literally lived on the same block.

Each of his children now had children of their own. A picture emerged of a huge family that did everything together: weekend family dinners, vacations, and camping trips.

Their father’s retirement dream come true was in meeting those grandchildren every day when the bus dropped them off at the end of his drive way and spending the rest of the day helping with homework, teaching, playing, making dinner, and spending time together.

There was a tremendous amount of love in this family, and you could feel this in the tears and emotions that poured from each of the four.

Each letter had stated just how hard their lives would be without him there as a major influence not only on their dreams but on their children’s as well.

This was an incredible man with an incredible gift for loving.

Each member of that family will love and remember him for the rest of their lives as they will have these memories to treasure each and every day.

In thinking about my own life as I sat there, I could feel that if ever there was a way to be remembered, this would be the way that I would want it to be. This would be the impact that I would want to leave behind. This is the life that I would want to lead.

His children now live on… together… but without him. In his passing, they are amiss from his presence, but not from his life lessons and love… in that, they are guided daily and know that his image lives on.

jp

Friday, March 21, 2008

Cute Little Jocie



The First Steps of an Engineer

Several months ago, while visiting the grandparents, we decided to drag out my old ‘Lego’ bins from when I was a kid. Packed into five separate 1 gallon Schwan’s ice cream containers from my youth (living eighteen miles out on the end of the Peninsula, Schwan’s was a great gift to us and I would look forward to their weekly visits so I could get my favorite ‘Rocky Road’ ice cream fix). I have years of my own scavenging of parts, pieces, and kits in there.

I had used to spend many hours, days, and probably even weeks in solitary imaginative engineering as I designed what I felt to be masterpieces. Any situation that I could think of I would create: fighter jets, airports and airplanes, fire trucks and fire stations, limousines, rock concerts, mansions, and many others.

When we brought these out of storage for Joey, I had originally thought he would take a quick look at them and think them boring and move on when compared to the electric toys that modern industry pushes on our children these days (Nintendo WII, Xbox, handheld games, you get the point), but to my surprise, he immediately took to playing with them and spent hours and hours with his newfound hobby.

His first few creations were similar to early designs that I’d done as well: mixed colors, no distinguishable form, missing the logical functionality that our adult minds would require in order to determine function, but to him they were brought to life by his childlike imagination.

“Look Daddy, a fire-boat!” he proclaimed while handing me a red stick with some blue and while blocks on it.

Joey’s uncle Ray spent several hours building a fire-station with him. This amazed Joey and he was so overjoyed that he created a full dozen fire apparatus all with light-bars and wheels to populate this new massive creation now named ‘Pike Fire Station No. 1’ (a throwback to his 4th birthday when Jenny had made a bunch of firefighter shirts for the kids that said ‘Pike Fire Department’).

Joey disappeared for the next two days up in the playroom at the grandparent’s house as he played and imagined scenarios like I used to when I was his age.

As we dragged our son away from his newfound obsession to head towards home, we made mental notes that this might be a really good idea for gift ideas for his upcoming 5th birthday in a couple of weeks.

Somehow a stowaway Lego creation made it home with us (Joey is notorious for being able to sneak something away in a pocket…. I know… I used to as well…) which led to a home based litigation proceeding that ended with a settlement from mom in the form of purchasing a small Lego set for him prior to his birthday.

Again, our son disappeared into a haze of seclusion as he immersed himself into the seduction that envelopes so many youthful engineers like him when playing with Lego’s.

For his 5th birthday, we loaded him with as many Lego and Playmobil sets as we could afford. His friends contributed to the mass with another dozen or so in addition to the ones from Jenny and I. With so many presents, we opted to require that he only open one present per day.

By day 4, he opted to open a very large Lego police station that included station, helicopter, command vehicle, and all terrain vehicles. This one was an incredibly complex undertaking as there were many pieces and parts in the box. The assembly was complicated it was even split into four different phases to help simplify the process.

As we started to pull the bags out and try to make sense of the assembly instructions (Lego does a wonderful job of crafting wordless instructions that require only visual acuity to discern the various steps), I realized that this was the turning point in my son’s life that I needed to put him in charge and just sit back providing the occasional assistance when required. I knew that I could have assembled the whole kit in about an hour, but, the joy in all this is doing it yourself, and so I forced myself to sit co-pilot to Joey on this one.

So many of our children’s toys come with the ‘Some Assembly Required’ statement plastered in a too-small font on some remote underbelly of the packaging that we’ve become numb to the regular package opening and assembly process.

Half of kids’ toys these days come ensnared in some sort of plastic coated wire, tape, or just insanely complex boxing (they say to protect against theft, but who are they fooling? This is some packaging engineer’s job security, right? Does all this work really make us feel like we’ve accomplished something in our children’s eyes to justify its existence in the first place?) that takes amazing amounts of dexterity just to untangle so they can be played with.

In contrast to most “remove from package and play” style tols, Lego and Playmobil place the joy of the toy part in the assembly and part in the play afterwards. This fact was almost lost on me until I realized that I needed to slap my intellect across the face and step back to let the real focus-point of this toy take his rightful position: Joey.

Progress was painfully slow at first as Joey learned to read the instructions and search through the myriad of parts spilled out on the kids table to find the required piece. As he would dig around on the table looking for a part I’d located minutes previous, I learned to hold my opinions and assistance unless asked, and even then I’d only give general guidance without actually resolving the issue to help push his confidence and abilities.

After several hours, he had assembled phase 1 out of 4 and he went to sleep with ATV and Police Gate Center in hand and a huge smile on his face.

Over the course of the next few nights, this pattern repeated itself as subsequent phases slowly found their ways to completion.

A child so perplexed by this fascination even called me at work the other day to ask if I would come home early to help him… I love this kid.

Last night he took the next step, which was to complete an entire assembly unassisted. He started after we had arrived home from work, and in my haste to get dinner ready and clean up the house, I neglected to oversee what he was working on. He disappeared during dinner (after asking to be excused) only to be audibly located an hour later as he announced the completion of a Playmobil Police Station.

“Dad, Dad, you’ve got to come see this!!” my excited son said as he pulled me up the stairs and into the playroom where he had his masterpiece on display.

He is so proud of himself at this point, and I am so proud of him. He really is turning out to be an amazing kid.

jp

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Still Not Getting It?

Yesterday, I wrote a snippet about how the number four is important, but I still think some of its meaning may have been lost, so, I may need to spell it out a little clearer....

* There are many things that reflect the number '4' in our lives, but, currently, Jenny and I have only three children...

If you complete the pattern... what do you get?

jp

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

Cross-section of Nikon D3 and 24-70 f/2.8 Lens from PMA 2008

I could never imagine doing this do such a wonderful camera and lens. Even thinking about this image makes the hairs stand on the back of my neck and I get that feeling like some is running their nails down a chalkboard....

Nonetheless, this is an amazing image of an incredible camera. This is from Nikon's PMA 2008 booth (probably a good marketing idea in retrospect).

What is amazing to me is just how think the glass really is in the lens and in the prism.

I love Nikon, thanks in part to my mother's life-long desire to own Nikon glass and bodies.

jp

Catch This

There is a pattern to my madness, and it's reasoning is easily discernible if you think about it...

* The square root of 4 is 2 and 4 is the smallest squared prime
* There are four corners to a square
* A quartet has four members
* Michigan touches four of the Great Lakes
* A quadruped has four legs
* The 4th of July was the day our country declared its Independence from Great Britain
* The Rule of 4 is a practice that prevents Supreme Court justices from controlling all of the cases it agrees to hear
* In mathematics, 4 is the smallest composite number.
* The 4th dimension of space is time.
* I have four drum sets
* I have four cameras
* Our house has four bedrooms (not counting the playroom as a bedroom)

Yes, there really is a pattern here.

jp

Shooting Primes

In recent months, my photography passions have been greatly seduced by shooting prime lenses rather than the more commonplace zoom lenses that dot the modern SLR landscape.

Although I don’t think of my abilities as a great highlight in the massive sea of amateur photographers, I would at least hope that I have enough vision to convey a message in each capture. Within this medium, the use of the prime or fixed focal length lens serves to extend creative composition by the user.

The great early masters of the art of photography were limited to only shooting these devices as things likes zooms, matrix metering, or even roll film were either not available or not apt enough to capture the desired scenes. In comprehending great works by such visionaries like Ansel Adams, it is amazing to note that these were crafted using this technology that is so underappreciated today.

In my ever growing collection, I have six primes:

· Nikon 10.5 f/2.8 DX
· Nikon 16 f/2.8
· Nikon 35 f/2
· Nikon 50 f/1.8
· Nikon 85 f/1.8
· Nikon 105 f/2.8 Micro

Standing apart from the multitudes of zoom lenses I have, these gems stand out in their ability to funnel my creativity into a single boxed view of the scene about to be captured. They help push the user to focus on composition in method by limiting the ability to grow or shrink the photo size through the use of the zoom. With the prime, to change the box size, you must move towards or away from your subject which also modifies the relationships of objects within the frame at the same time thus changing your composition. This in turn forces you to further understand your composition and put more thought into it as you create.

In addition to the creative side, there is also the “speed” factor related to these lenses.

Optimally, I would shoot at ISO 100 at all times, if I could, but with typical zoom lenses (f/3.5 – f/5.6), those speeds are greatly limited by smaller apertures especially when zooming in closer to your subject.

Prime lenses lack this limitation and offer 2 to 4 times more light through the lens an onto your sensor (or film).

For a photographer, this greater amount of light corresponds to the “speed” at which either the shutter can be set or the ISO/ASA rating of the film/sensor being used.

Ansel offers some wonderful explanations of the relationships between Aperture, Shutter Speed, and Film Speed, in his series of books “The Camera”, “The Negative”, and “The Print.”

In essence, these break down to a 1:1 ratio between all three elements.

Doubling the ISO is equal to doubling the shutter speed or increasing one f-stop on the lens (roughly).

So, at ISO-100 with a 1/10th shutter speed at f/1.2 would be equal to:

· ISO-200 with a 1/20th shutter speed at f/1.4
· ISO-200 with a 1/10th shutter speed at f/2.0
· ISO-400 with a 1/20th shutter speed at f/2.0

ISO speeds start at 100 and increase by powers of 2 from there. IE: 100, 200, 400, 800, and 1600 (with 3200, 6400, 12.8k, and 25.6k being further multiples now being seen in digital cameras).

Apertures start ideally at 1.0, 1.4, 2.0, 2.8, 4.0, 5.6, 8, 11, 16, 22, 32 being the common major numbers. More information about f-stops is available here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-number and about apertures here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture.

This increase in “speed” allows me to shoot indoors under very low light conditions at lower ISOs. Again, ideally I would prefer the lowest possible ISO setting on my camera (ISO 100 or ISO 200 depending on the model) as this gives me the least amount of noise.

For illustration purposes, I will include several recent prime lens photographs utilizing this technique.

jp

Jocie's First Slide

While at Joey's birthday party, Brooke took little Jocie for a ride down the slide.

Screams of joy dittoed the smiles seen on her face in these photos.

She loved every ounce of this experience.

jp




Joey's 5th (Part II)

Yesterday, I had wrote about Joey's name with the number "5" displayed next to it at the entrance where his brithday was being held.

Today, I am uploading these pictures since they are just too neat not to share.

jp