Ever wondered what makes an all-time classic song? Maybe it's three-part harmonies and some tricky guitar work -- or maybe it's 16 tracks of vocals set up to be played like chords, a Moog synthesizer, and the office secretary. Via Boing Boing, check out this fascinating little story of the making of 10cc's "I'm Not In Love." (Not least for its clever use of images.)
July 2010 Archives
Image by carljohnson via Flickr
It happened that I was having dinner with not one but two people who, if they were doing their jobs, would take responsibility for the outrageous threats of this toothed water marmot. One chose to ignore my plight entirely; the other rolled her eyes and said "Peebles Island," clearly familiar with the transgressions of this threat to our way of life. Did they do anything? They did not.
Monsieur Beavair? I'll be back.
Image by carljohnson via Flickr
Complications involved dropping her at work, getting back to where my truck was courting a parking ticket (commuters are filling up the Corning Preserve boat launch parking lot, leaving no room for people who are actually using the recreational facilities. This is causing me much anger). Drove home, deposited the broken bike, pulled out the backup to ride back to the car, so I could drive back up to the Collar City and pick up faithful spouse. Turns out riding two bikes with VERY different geometry in the same day: not a good idea. Thighs hurt. But it was mostly downhilll, and solved the logistical problem. I even got across the Dunn without a flat!
Now, a swapping of wheels, driving to the bike shop, and continued disappointment from a shortened ride that was otherwise just bliss.
Because some people in this house are too consumed with the Tour de France each night to be bothered with common housework, there is precisely one clean cereal bowl in the house this morning. It is handpainted and marked as "Mom's Bowl," but I am using it despite this possessive proclamation. There are, however, two clean spoons (and, if absolutely necessary, titanium sporks).
MapMyRide has been a bit of a thorn the last couple of years -- I loved being able to map my bike rides, but it was painfully slow, hard to correct, and the interface was sub-great. But they've got a much improved site in beta, it works beautifully (and of course now I have a screamingly fast computer that can handle it), and now they have a stupid web trick that I can't help but love: fly-over video, courtesy of Google Earth, of my bike routes. It's like having a helicopter flying over my route, and the imagery gives me features of the terrain that I never see from the bike. Stupidly cool.
Check it out here:
Check it out here:
I suppose that in some of the big cities there might still be the staple-gun crews that run around tacking band flyers to telephone poles, but they are merely diluted descendants of the mighty bill poster of the 19th century. The phrase "Post No Bills" seemed only a curious relic to me as a youth, something I saw in cartoons and old movie backgrounds but could make little sense of, the old usage of "bill" or "handbill" as a sheet of advertising having all but vanished. Once there was a thriving business in advertising through posting of bllls, advertising sheets that were glued to buildings, fences, and just about anything that would stand still. This ad is from 1895, when Mrs. M.E. Dundon of Troy proclaimed the power of pasted-on advertising: "The Brush A Power In The Land." And, more to the point, "Cash Buys Paste." Indeed it does.
(A version of this was previously published at All Over Albany.)
So, what is a Menand?
Well, the question really is, who was Menand?
For the answer, you'd have to look back to the late 1800s, when everyone from well-to-do collectors of exotic flora, to prosperous homeowners with gardens, to cemetery visitors who wanted to pay tribute to a loved one -- would go to Menand's.
Louis Menand was
the son of a gardener in Chalons, Burgundy, France. As early as he could
remember, he was fascinated by horticulture. "I was eight or nine years
old," he later wrote, "when I began to try to grow plants from
cuttings. I have always been fond of cutting, properly or figuratively
speaking, except cutting my fingers."
Eventually Louis became an estate gardener in Paris and later in the Champagne region. In 1837 he came to New York and went to work at nurseries in Halett's Cove, which would later become Astoria. There he met a young piano teacher from Albany named Adelaide Jackson. They fell in love and were married in her family home on Park Place in Albany, and soon took up residence in what they called "the haunted house" on the Albany-Troy Road (Broadway). Louis began selling plants. After a rough first year ("more than modest, that is to say meagre, I might say miserable!!"), things began to pick up.
Menand had a fair collection of "hardy perennial plants," which had become pretty popular in the Albany/Troy area. Later he sold Norway spruces, balsam firs and other popular trees and shrubs. In 1847 he was able to buy several acres of land on what is now Menand Road, where Ganser-Smith Park is now located, for his greenhouses and nursery.
He cultivated plants that, no doubt, had never before been seen in this old Dutch town -- camellias, palm ferns, cacti, and orchids, among others. Forty years later, an article in The Gardeners' Monthly and Horticulturist would proclaim:
"It is Mr. Menand's aim to exhibit at least one specimen of every known variety ; and whenever a new one is produced in any quarter of the world, it will not be long before it may be found at Menand's. Thus it often happens that persons who search in vain for rare specimens in New York and elsewhere, are generally directed to 'a crazy Frenchman at Albany,' where they are sure to find what they want and carry it away, provided their purse is long enough. In fact, it is Mr. Menand's aim to furnish anything from a strawberry to a tree."
He was noted for importing exotic plants from Europe, and commanded an impressive price for his best camellias: "a little plant four inches high would sell for $25."
Menand won significant awards for his plants through the years, and continued to grow. He bought 31 acres near the entrance to Albany Rural Cemetery, where he set up his son with a half dozen hot houses devoted to growing cut flowers, roses, carnations, pansies, geraniums and "an almost endless variety of other species suitable for cemetery decoration." These included all manner of shrubs, which no doubt still influence the scenery in the cemetery.
His greenhouses were so popular that the Albany and Northern Railroad added a stop there in 1856, named "Menand's Crossing," which the succeeding Delaware and Hudson Railroad renamed "Menand's Station."
Louis set about telling the story of his life in an autobiography, with the snappy title, Autobiography and Recollections of Incidents Connected With Horticultural Affairs, Etc., From 1807 up to this day 1898 With Portrait and Allegorical Figures. 'By an ever practical wisdom seeker,' L. Menand. With an appendix of retrospective incidents omitted or forgotten.
The title is about as direct as the rest of the book, originally published in 1892 and then updated in 1898. The ramblings of this "crazy Frenchman at Albany" shed very little light on the actual events of his life but give an incredible sense of the energetic character of Louis Menand. There are exuberant paeans to his wife Adelaide (whom he calls "Phanerogyne," meaning "remarkable woman," who died in 1890. There are rambling thoughts on the various revolutions and republics in France, a scathing appraisal of his arrival in a free land "where slavery was flourishing as carnations," and tales of intrigues at flower exhibitions, all told in the least linear style imaginable. (The version available here on Google Books includes several handwritten notes by Louis.)
Louis Menand died in 1900 at the age of 94. It wasn't until 1924 that the apostrophe-free name of Menands became official, when the village was incorporated.
Image via Wikipedia
I had set a goal of biking every day in July, a goal that a very very sore throat already thwarted for the first day of the month, and we'll see how realistic it is for the rest of the time. The Tour is inspiring, and yet watching it takes up time that could be spent biking -- one of life's little paradoxes.
On with the Tour!
