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December 2006 -- February 2007 Permanent Archive
25 February 2007 (All the way from New Jersey)
Gina Pensiero is not a graffiti artist. And I think it's fair
to say that her Burners and Bombs blog documenting graffiti art is not
her number one priority at the moment. But it was a link to the graffiti creator
on that blog that led me to create the image below, so that's why I even mention it.
Back to Gina.
If she's not a graffiti artist, well then what does she
do? There's a bit of insight in
Gina's Talk.
20 February 2007 (Year of the Pig)
We've just entered the Year of the Pig according to the Chinese zodiac.
In fact, it's a special Year of the
Pig because it coincides with a Gold Year, which makes this the Year of the Golden Pig.
The pigs enjoying a ride
over there to the left are not golden, but they're special nonetheless, because by virtue of where they're standing, they're
teeter trotters. Now, usage of 'trotters' to designate pigs specifically and hoofed animals in general might
not be widespread enough to be easily recognizeable to many readers, so I'll just tell you: a 'trotter' may refer
to any hooved animal, in particular to a pig. There, now everyone can laugh along. Unless you don't like word play ...
in which case, the reference might have come off as a ham-handed linguistic flourish. That's fine, not everyone
likes their bacon fried on the same side.
This ten-inch-long desktop totter was crafted from poplar with dark-walnut Danish oil applied. Actual walnut
would look better. Anybody know where I can score some walnut wood? Michigan-grown would be great. Independent of
appearance, this device can be used quite effectively to launch small objects (e.g., rubber pigs)
catapult-style in a nice gentle arc at a targets of choice.
18 February 2007 (Tottering through a snow storm)
Last Tuesday afternoon the forecasted snowstorm had arrived in full force in Ann Arbor, so I was glad the totter was snugly
wrapped in its tarp. A canvasser knocked on the door with a clipboard in his hand, and
he gave me his standard Sierra Club campaign pitch against global warming (yeah, there was some irony there, what with the
blizzard conditions outside). So I did what I do whenever anyone knocks on the door--I gave
Pete my standard pitch for riding the teeter tottter. In over a year of giving this pitch to various folks who've
knocked on the door representing various groups--from
Jehovah's Witnesses, to Clean Water Action, to the Green Party, to Friends of the Doves--nobody has taken me up on the offer
of a ride even on some sunny and pleasant days. But that doesn't particularly surprise me. It's not like I have a glossy brochure to hand them. So to most
people, I imagine it feels like some creepy old dude trying to coax them into the backyard, out of view, out of earshot, etc.
But last Tuesday, Pete J. proved his canvassing mettle by hopping aboard the frozen lumber
in blizzard conditions. The Talk is a bit abbreviated as Talks go. But for, um, Pete's sake, it was cold and snowy!
14 February 2007 (Using Teeter Totters to Sell Cars)
I think I've identified an odd trend in automotive marketing.
First it was the Hyundai using a human teeter totter to promote their Sante Fe (cf. the 18 January entry).
Now it's Toyota promoting their
Tundra using a teeter totter.
I wonder, though, about the label 'Toyota Tundra See Saw' on YouTube. What with all the T's just lying around ... Toyota ... Tundra ... not to mention Truck ... it's hard for me to fathom not riding that alliterative train all the way to teeter-totter-ville.
9 February 2007 (Green Roofs at the
University of Michigan)
The cold-temperature Teeter Talk record set by Diane Ratkovich
lasted exactly one ride. U of M undergrad Liza Wallis set a new standard (10F),
when she braved the cold
to talk about a green roof project that she and some fellow students have proposed.
8 February 2007 (The Library and the Newspaper)
Back in May of last
year Ann Arbor District Library Director, Josie Parker, talked on the totter about
the challenges associated with digital archiving of the local newspaper, The Ann Arbor News. Things didn't
sound very optimistic at that time.
But not very long after the ride, Josie gave me a heads up that the Ann Arbor District
Library had an archive of the Ann Arbor News available
online (from the comfort of your own home) dating from 1 July 2004 forward. Yesterday when Mark Maynard
lamented the short 14-day archive of the newspaper's own MLive.com hosted site,
I was
reminded I had neither tested the library's archive out nor logged that bit of progress
here. Done and done. Sorry for the long delay.
7 February 2007 (New Comic)
Back in December,
it did occur to me
that it might be interesting to post a year-end summary breakdown of the different
Talks by how frequently the pages had been accessed.
But because the software I use to generate web traffic reports offers analysis by day, and by month,
but nothing longer-term, this would have required some additional work. Just eyeballing it, though, the
most-viewed Talk in the collection so far
is last year's ride with T. Casey Brennan.
A more significant recent triumph
for T. Casey is the inclusion of his 'Hypothetical Cerebus' in the new ACTOR Comics volume.
The cover of this 152-page collection, adorned with the Incredible Hulk and Spiderman, is easy to spot on the rack at
Vault of Midnight
on Main Street in downtown Ann Arbor. Been a while since you peeked inside a comic book? If you're looking for an excuse,
then the fact that you'd be supporting a downtown business and a local writer (among other comic book veterans) could
serve as one.
6 February 2007 (Real Estate)
Pfizer announced
recently that it's closing down its research and development facility in Ann Arbor, thus removing around 2000
jobs from the regional economy. Preliminary reports are that at least some Pfizer workers will be offered placement
in other Pfizer locations. That's a cold dose of reality for the real estate market.
But not colder than the temperature during the the totter
ride that Realtor®,
Diane Ratkovich, took last week.
She set a new cold-temperature record at 12F degrees.
2 February 2007 (Good Citizens)
There's
more to being a good citizen than voting.
In his Talk, Peter Thomason elaborates on sustainable living, the kingdom of love,
and the end of life. There's plenty of specific discussion of chickens as well.
31 January 2007 (Graduating Senior)
On 2 January
2007, University of Michigan senior,
Iden Baghdadchi, marked the occasion of his birthday. It wasn't ordinary.
25 January 2007 (Moving far away, you wind up closer)
Back at the end of the summer, Brandon Zwagerman stopped by for a totter ride in a
minivan packed with everything he owned, leaving Ann Arbor, heading for Brooklyn. Lou Rosenfeld is heading
away from here as well. Lou didn't stop by for his totter ride literally on his way out of town. And he's
lived in Ann Arbor a lot longer than Brandon did. But Lou and his family are
headed for the same place as Brandon: Brooklyn.
In the top image, the mighty Huron River is visible coursing
roughly southeastward across the upper quadrants. In the upper left quadrant of the
bottom image, you can see Manhattan nosing its way out into
Upper New York Bay
Thus, the top image locates Brandon and Lou's respective Ann Arbor homes.
Straight-line distance: 1 mile
And the bottom image locates their respective Brooklyn homes.
Straight-line distance: .4 miles
Moral: Leaving Ann Arbor brings people closer together. By a factor greater than two.
Disclaimer: For Brandon's Brooklyn location, I'm using his initial 3-month sublet. He's moved out of there now. But
his new address doesn't make the same point. I mention this not only in the interest of accuracy, but also because
I would not want anyone to indulge in the speculation that Lou picked that location in order to be
close to Brandon. As best I know, they're not acquainted.
But given the close proximity of Lou's new
place in Brooklyn to Prospect Park, what I am willing to speculate is that one reason he picked that location was because
he's afraid he'd miss his tree, a Camperdown Elm [just follow the
link and look at the picture with its caption]
in his Ann Arbor front yard. No kidding, he talks about the tree and more right there in his Talk.
23 January 2007 (Sound)
My next-door neighbor reported
that when she showed Teeter Talk to a fifteen-year old, his response was, Blogs are for old people; young people don't read.
I have to say, a lot of old people don't read much, either. That's fine. I'm still fairly committed to the text-based
presentational premise of Teeter Talk. Among the virtues of text is that it's inherently searchable and is thus to
some extent automatically findable. So I don't envision providing audio of the Talks anytime soon. But thanks to a suggestion
from Murph to invite Bob Droppleman
to ride the totter, I'm convinced that just this once I need to share a sound bite
of a totter ride. Make sure your speakers are turned on. Now, head on over to the
Talk with Bob Droppleman.
20 January 2007 (Thank God You're Here)
When Nyima and Josh Funk tottered over the holiday break, Nyima talked about a pilot she'd done
for a new improvised TV comedy show called Thank God You're Here. She was hoping it would be picked up by NBC. I've said it
before and I'll say it again: wishes told on the totter come true.
NBC has announced that they've ordered six episodes.
Good job, Nyima!
19 January 2007 (Toy Totter)
The quiet week on
the totter has given me a little extra time to prepare for an after-school tutoring program I'll be helping out
with soon.
We've been advised that the first order of business is to
to attend to homework, but it's also been stressed that it's important to have a
backup plan for the occasions when there is no
homework or it's finished early. The backup plan is supposed to be more than just fun and games. It's supposed to
have solid academic and educational value. One veteran tutor suggested that especially for younger kids, tactile
activities with academic
content would be better received than paper-and-pencil exercises. My backup plan: The Law of the Lever.
The image
above shows a two-foot
long desktop teeter totter I crafted out of pieces of poplar block and dowel
(for scale, the coin in the foreground is a quarter). The extra-large nuts were sourced from the small parts room at Stadium Hardware.
Yes, I know: you can't just dive right into the Law of the Lever with a second-grader. So for second-graders, it might
just be a way to drill multiplication facts. For readers who think LoL only means laugh-out-loud, and not also Law of the Lever,
the image depicts the following state of affairs:
3 inches times 3 nuts = 9 inches times 1 nut.
1 nut. A nut. Sometimes you feel like a nut. But sometimes you don't. Anybody have some candy? We were advised not
to give the students candy. Hmmm, now I wonder ... do second graders even know how to do multiplication??
Will I be assigned a second-grader or a sixth-grader??
No worries. All I have to remember is stay flexible. And focused.
18 January 2007 (Shape of a totter)
In the
the new Hyundai commercial featuring the dance troupe Pilobolus,
what strikes me as the most interesting move is not forming the outline of the Hyundai Santa Fe, but rather the human
teeter totter board previewed in the image here. I suppose I have a bit of a one-track mind, but seriously it's the best
part of the commerical. Watch it and judge for yourself.
Mind you, I still like my standard issue totter made
from lumber way better. Why? Well, I'm fond of saying, It takes two to totter. But for Pilobolus,
it's fair to say, It takes four (maybe five ... I can't really tell) to totter. Just doesn't have the same punch, does it?
16 January 2007 (Quiet Week)
It's going to be
a quiet
week on the totter. Teetering is due to resume this weekend. In the meantime, here's some miscellaneous musings.
First, I've gained some additional insight into Charlie Slick. I provided Charlie with some White Castle cheeseburgers
to snack on during his totter ride, because I came across an odd video of him eating White Castle burgers with
chopsticks,
and I figured that he might appreciate the burgers. What I didn't realize at the time (and discovered only yesterday) is that
Charlie has composed
a song about the wonder of White Castle, which you must hear to appreciate.
(In any event, it's my assumption that it's Charlie's work. It's hidden away under
what amounts to an alternate MySpace page as near as I can tell.) Just choose the fourth track in the StandAlone Player and you'll be
treated to something of a rap anthem about those delicious square patties.
I peeked under the totter tarp
this morning to verify that it stayed dry through the ice storm.
The totter tarp was an innovation added after tottering almost exactly a year ago with Chris Easthope.
If you check the condition of the board in that photo, you'll understand why we had to break out the cardboard seat pads.
The Fox Network aired the premiere of '24' over the last couple of nights. If your idea of good clean fun is
watching Jack Bauer take a chomp out of a bad guy's throat and spit out a mouthful of neck meat,
then '24' is the show for you. That TV series reminds me of
Joan Lowenstein--that is, it reminds me of the conversation we had about
the show while riding the totter. At the time, she was hoping for a story arc that would illuminate Edgar's character. A couple of episodes
after that, Edgar died in a poison gas attack. I wonder if this season Joan was hoping for a plot development
that prominently featured Jack's colleague,
Curtis. (For non-viewers, in the fourth hour of the season, Jack blew his buddy Curtis away to save a terrorist-turned-peacemaker ... because
Jack Bauer is One. Bad. Ass.)
12 January 2007 (Same Planet, Different Axis)
Charlie Slick and I discussed on the totter that we'd heard The Planet
was closing down its brick-and-mortar operation. Walking downtown the other night through a snow squall, I ran into
Adam de Angeli. He brought
me up to date on The Planet. Long story short: not closing. He found a group of folks to split the lease, and sometime soon
you can expect to see The Planet (still on North Main Street) in a new incarnation.
But you might not find
Adam at the store from 5-6pm Monday through Friday. He might well be in the same spot I ran into him: standing outside the
Federal Building on Liberty Street, protesting the war in Iraq. The flyer being distributed by a woman named Libby
describes a goal of 1000 people a day at that spot. Recognizing it might be difficult to find 1000 people willing
to show up every day, the pitch to folks is to pick one day a month
to show up and protest. That would be an operation involving 20,000 people, or just 4% of Washtenaw County's population. Put
that way, it seems a bit more tractable.
8 January 2007 (The writing on the wall)
Last January, having tottered with Tom Bourque a couple of weeks previously,
I joined him and the Nasty Boys
Glee Club for a Saturday morning run. My attendance record on these runs over the last year has not been stellar, but
I've managed to haul myself out of bed on the occasional Saturday morning. Last Saturday, I received my commemorative first
anniversary award from Tom, which is shown in the image to the left.
Mmmm, vanilla. My favorite flavor of PowerGel. Seriously, it is.
Now the thing about vanilla-flavored PowerGel is, sure, it's vanilla flavored, but a few minutes after you suck it down,
you feel that boost of energy that tells you it's not plain vanilla.
And that serves as an apt
analogy for describing
Charlie Slick. He might look like an average guy, but a few minutes after he's launched himself into his live
synthesizer extravaganza, you realize he's anything but plain vanilla. Anyway, there's apparently
some curiosity locally about who Charlie is.
This curiosity is attested by the image below, which I found
while researching local examples of
trough-style urinals ... but that's a whole 'nother story, which might be told in greater detail later. For now, I'll
focus on sating Ann Arborites' hunger for information about Charlie. When you read Charlie's Talk, your curiosity might not be completely satisfied about
exactly who he is, but you will find that his expertise
extends far beyond synthesizers--to plants and cats, for example.
But if you're looking for an explanation
of the plate of White Castle cheeseburgers he's holding in his picture, you won't find it in the Talk. No particular
reason we didn't talk about the miracle of White Castle burgers ... I just forgot.
Happy New Year.
2 January 2006 (The Shiz: the husband and wife edition)
There's a video that's been posted on YouTube since November from the Kanye West episode of Nick Cannon's
Wild 'N Out, which was
apparently never actually aired on MTV. Here's what one YouTube commenter had to say about it:
cutheron (1 week ago)
that big white guy is the shiz
What can I say ... except that big white guy, Josh Funk, is the shiz.
And I base that assessment not just on
his powers of improvisational acting, but on his teeter totter riding prowess. And in this, I depart from my
usual practice of not singling out totterees as extraordinarily good or bad totterers. But for heaven's sake, from
my end of the totter, 
it was the easiest ride in the history of Teeter Talk, so I feel like I ought to give Josh his due.
And I say it was the easiest ride ever, even though I was sitting atop 50 pounds of
cold steel, which I had loaded onto the totter to help with the balance ... the Law of the Lever has its limits.
Now, to be perfectly honest, Josh is not that big. And if he'd been tottering solo,
I wouldn't have needed the extra 50 pounds of counterweight. But perched on the totter oppposite me
along with Josh was his lovely bride, Nyima Funk, who, I daresay, is also the shiz. In spite of the extra weight, the balance of the
totter was still tilted in Nyima and Josh's favor, so it was pretty much left to Josh's quads of steel to keep their end up.
And that he did.
As you read their Talk, if you find that Nyima and Josh don't sound like superficial show business people, that
might be because they're from around here. And that helps explain how they wound up in my backyard two days after
Christmas. Because people who live in Los Angeles wouldn't make the trek out to Michigan just to ride my teeter totter ...
or would they?
27 December 2006 (When all you've got's a hammer,
everything looks like ... a patient)
When I think of hammers, the first name that comes to mind is John Henry,
the steel drivin' man, immortalized in American legend and song. After that I tend to think of carpenters ... and perhaps
communists. Somewhere way down the list are neurologists. But after tottering with neurologist
Zach London, a re-ranking might be appropriate. Of course, there's more to Dr.
London's Talk than just
reflex hammers. For example, if you're a drug company rep, you'll learn that
you're not going to be able to buy him lunch, even if that lunch includes
hard tacos.
22 December 2006 (Green Rims)
I met
Jimmy Raggett
when I spotted his request on Bluish Barn for volunteers to staff checkpoints
for a bicycle race. As the organizer of that event, he didn't ride it himself, but as he demonstrates in the photograph
below, he's quite good on the bike. Not to mention that his early morning ride set a low-temperature Teeter Talk
record of 21F,
which is 4 degrees colder that the previous mark shared by René Greff
and Joan Lowenstein. And those rims really are that green.
19 December 2006 (Just hangin')
Getting the world's clothes clean in a way that keeps the planet spinning properly on its axis doesn't seem that hard.
Indeed, an individual can
act almost immediately on this issue by hang-drying their clothes instead of using a gas or electric clothes dryer.
The washing part is a bit harder. But at least in the short term, without yet aspiring to build a community-based
effort for clothes-washing by human power, I'm willing to act solo by doing a demonstration load for anyone who wants
to share their dirty laundry with me. Seriously. I mean, if it turns out that hundreds of
people are taking advantage of this offer, maybe then I'll have to reconsider. For now, bring it on. What
seems a lot harder than using green methods to remove laundry stains,
is achieving something like equal justice for Palestinians and Israelis. How does that hang
together with laundry? Well, they're not unrelated. For details, read the Talk with
Aimee Smith, Co-Chair of the Huron Valley Greens.
14 December 2006 (Year One)
This enterprise was set in motion on 9 December 2005 when René Greff
launched herself onto the frozen lumber
of the teeter totter. Exactly one year later, Matt Greff matched the effort
of his lovely bride.
Briefly put, it's been a great first year. Thanks to everyone for riding. Thanks to everyone for
reading. Here's to another year of tottering!
12 December 2006 (Blur)
I didn't think I'd ever met Dale Winling before teeter tottering with him last
Saturday. But in the course of tottering, it became apparent that we'd possibly crossed
paths sometime in the late 90's. What I know
for sure is that I ran a 400M leg of a track relay medley as a part of some kind of indoor UM track and field intramural
event around about that time frame. The opening leg was 800M. I have a vague recollection of waiting for my turn to
run and watching some guy leading the field
around the first 3 of the four 200M laps on that opening leg, and then, to his utter chagrin, getting passed by the guy who'd been sitting on his
shoulder the whole time. I'm not going
to research it further to confirm, because there's a faint possibility that I'd wind up confirming it was not him. I don't
remember the guy who got passed wearing a bow tie, for example, which proves nothing, but certainly it's a data point.
So I'm basking in the blur of the memory, and settling into believing that guy was Dale ... because it makes
a way better tale from the totter. Read the Talk, judge for yourself.
Memories aren't the only thing that can be blurred.
Below is the result of Dale's pinhole photography experiment showing his view down the totter.
I'm rather fond of it. The fence is discernable to the right. The bright part on the left, that's the totter board.
The roughly vertical dark blob in the left half, that's me. If you stand up and step across the room away from your monitor, it clears up. A little.
5 December 2006 (DIY)
Just a heads up that more complete documentation of the laundry spinner is now available stashed
under this link: pedal-powered laundry spinner.
TT Log Archives
| 2010 | October to present |
| 2009-10 | January-December, January-September |
| 2008 | September, October, November, December |
| 2008 | July, August |
| 2008 | June |
| 2008 | April, May |
| 2008 | February, March |
| 2007-2008 | December, January |
| 2007 | October, November |
| 2007 | July, August, September |
| 2007 | May, June |
| 2007 | March, April |
| 2006-2007 | December, January, February |
| 2006 | September, October, November |
| 2006 | June, July, August |
| 2005-2006 | December, January, February, March, April, May |
NB: All totterees are already listed in the left hand column (in chronological order). What is
available in the TT Log Archives are just the log entries.