BHD Influences: Griffin and Sabine

One of the first things I brought to The BHD (Bad Hair Day) Project was a copy of a 1991 book by Nick Bantock entitled Griffin and Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence

 

  

I recall being charmed and delighted by the book back in the day, and find it hard to believe it's been 30 years....

 

Wikipedia summarizes thusly:

The story is told through a series of removable letters and postcards between the two main characters . . . Griffin Moss is an artist living in London who makes postcards for a living. He is unhappy and lonely, though he is unaware of these feelings. His life is changed forever when he receives a cryptic postcard from Sabine Strohem, a woman he has never met. Like Griffin, she is an artist (she illustrates postage stamps) and comes from a fictional group of small islands in the South Pacific known as the Sicmon Islands (Arbah, Katie, Katin, Ta Fin, Quepol and Typ). The two begin to correspond regularly. 

The source material for BHD is two-fold. The first part is comprised of journals, datebooks, artwork, recordings, other pieces of ephemera and "found objects" relating to B's (the protagonist) illness and recovery. The second part continues the story, with the very significant addition of a primary relationship, C. There is a lot of correspondence in the second part, and the fact that we had the original source material (letters, envelopes, often delightfully decorated or illustrated) made me think of Griffin & Sabine.

Ultimately, the BHD story was too big to tell in an art-book like Bantock's works. We did (and by we, I mean Caresse, our graphics designer), however, weave found objects throughout the text in a way that resonates with Bantock's physical letters. 

I could see the B&C correspondance published / reproduced in a very similar way to Griffin& Sabine, should The BHD Project ever take off....

Bad Hair Day on Planet Earth

One of the many side projects I have been working on over the past few years is a book / memoir being written by my teacher, friend, and employer, Barbara Ruzansky, tentatively entitled Bad Hair Day on Planet Earth. 

We're starting to get the social media going for the soon to be released / published project - here's TheBHDproject Instagram page to start. I'm sure other marketing material (website, crowd-funding, etc.) will be ready soon. 

I'm not editing the book (that would be Ali) and not doing layout (that would be Caresse) and not seeking grants or funding (that would be Miranda). I was ostensibly brought on board for socail media purposes, but I'm probably not going to have time or aptitude for that (being rather Instagram resistant). No, my role on the project has been kind of shaman or guru - coming up with ideas or alternatives or concepts that more often than not end up being implemented. 

Not going to write too much about the book project right now. But I intend to put together some thoughts over the next few weeks and months about the process of putting the book together, of influences, concepts related to the book, etc. that might find their way into the book marketing and support channels. Let's call this a scratch pad for these.....

Pandemic Projects

An in-progress list of the things that have kept me busy, employed, and dare I say it, alive during the past 18 months. 

First, I've live-streamed a bunch of yoga classes. Starting with an iPad on a tripod, and evolving over time to include:

• Lights (I pulled the kirtan lighting package out of storage and set up a bit of a stage) 
• Sound (I employed a wireless headset for the instructor for better sound, carefully sanitized between uses) 
• Facebook Live, migrating to 
• Youtube, migrating to 
• Vimeo
• Got the studio up to speed on Zoom, working with instructors who were able to teach from home, and setting up in-studio resources, including
• A Zoom cart - which started with back to back monitors (one for instructor one for operator, who had to sit through class in the room) and adding external cameras and mics
  
• Transition to HDMI cameras and an amazing little switching box that is as close to being a TD as I'll ever get. We used that for Zoom classes (initially) to prove the concept and test the hardware / cabling, before
• Permanently mounting the HDMI system in Studio A (with a control area in the office), and bringing the zoom cart back to life for independent use. Set up includes a remote monitor (for the instructor), some specialized microphones, and provision for bluetooth headsets, direct music from the room sound system, etc.

So right now, we've got a full blown, 4 camera system in Studio A (we livestream all of our in studio classes) and a rolling Zoom cart in Studio B (which I'm still tweaking, hoping to be able to livestream Studio B classes, as well as do zoom only classes)  

And other (sort of related) projects: 

• Cleaned out the long abandoned (10 years) studio storage room
• Cleaned out the shed behind the studio
• Orchestrated the great paperwork purge of 2020, Katie and I were able to send 40 banker's boxes to the shredder.
• Dug out the studio planters and made ready for flowers (they look lovely) 
• Picked up a new hose and reel (ours got swiped early in the pandemic)
• Purchased and supervised the installation of large roller shades on the east side of Studio A (where the morning light makes live streaming challenging)
• Purchased a collection of orange traffic cones (imprinted with WHY, the studio brand) to replace the crappy buckets full of concrete and fence posts doing service as parking lot dividers. 
• Assembled an old wire cart to use as a prop rack 
• Developed a system to set props aside for 72 hours between use (the better to ensure COVID safety on surfaces)
  
• Purchased dozens of white pillowcases (to cover bolsters) for yin and restorative classes
• Laid out little removable stickers on the floor(s) a dozen or so times, to facilitate social distancing and keeping students from blocking camera angles

My mantra over the past 18 months: never let a perfectly good pandemic go to waste. 

Framingham

Some time to blog this morning. Long, long overdue.

I'm wearing a Framingham State University tee shirt this morning. It's a fairly cheap, nondescript grey shirt that I picked up at Stop & Shop two years ago, the day before my brother Tom died. I had traveled north to take the day shift at the hospice facility, and realizing that Tom was falling fast and an overnight was probably in order, I stopped to pick up a tee-shirt to sleep in. It's gone into regular rotation these days, and I think of Tom when I wear it. 

Framingham, MA is home / not-home for me. My fond hometown is York, PA - with the house & church & school & swim club & neighborhood of my youth. It looms magically in my memory, although when I've visited in later years seemed so much smaller and more parochial. 

When dad lost his job at McCrory Corporation in the early-70's, and found a job at Zayre Corporation, the Russell family moved to New England, and found a home in Framingham. We moved in the summer of 1975, perfectly timed (for me) to enter high school. Not so perfect for my sister Kathy who lost out on 8th grade at St. Joseph's in York, where the 8th graders were kings and queens.

I only really lived in Framingham for a handful of years. Four years of high school. Then summer / holidays as I took up college residence in nearby Worcester. Upon graduation, I moved to CT where I have lived ever since (Bristol, Southington, Danbury, Waterbury, Hartford, and New Britain). 

And yet Framingham has been home. Mom was able to stay in the family home for many years after Dad died, so that's where we gathered. When my brothers fledged, she sold the home ($180K, Zillow says it's worth $510K today), but stayed in Framingham, buying a condo in Nobscot that became our family home base. Tom lived with me in CT for a few years, then headed back to a tiny apartment in Framingham, he never quite found his way out of there. Kevin owned a nice home with a pool near the family home, then bought mom's condo when she moved to assisted living - he still lives there. Kathy has homes all over (the Cape, VT, Florida). But I guess in some ways Framingham is still ground zero. 

There are odd little places anchoring me to the town. I worked at the McDonald's on Rte. 30 through high school and college (and had dreams about forgetting to pick up a check or forgetting to report for a shift for decades after). It's still there but not recognizable after multiple renovations. A lot of my social life came through there - vacations, bowling, tennis, softball. Crew picnics at Hopkinton State Park where we'd cook all that McD food on an open grill (it was pretty good).

I spent many hours in the darkness of the Fun n' Games arcade (also still there, also much changed), ate solitary meals at The Taco Maker (a knock off Taco Bell, I still fondly remember the enchilada combo), rambled through the old Shopper's World (we'd ride bikes down, before I was driving). The General Cinema multiplex (when 4 theaters in one location was a lot). The second run "Flick" theater where you'd see artsy films (Tom worked there for many years, I remember the white short and black bow tie).

 Some bar along Rte 9 (can't remember the name) where Mom took me for a drink when I turned 18 (I could drink legally for a few months then they raised the drinking age), probably en route from the hospital to visit Dad who died a month or two later. Later on, drinking with friends in the same bar, we played Bob Seger's "Horizontal Bop" over and over on the jukebox just to be shits, laughing uproariously.  

My alma mater, Marian High School, now closed. Bowditch Field (watching high school football games, one laughable season on the track team). The Framingham Centre  Library, an oddly designed and wholly impractical structure (much like much of the 70s) located on the road between school and home. We'd walk to the library, hang with friends, do homework (or not) and wait for a ride home. 

I'm not really going anywhere with this, I guess. Just remembering. Crying a little. Doing that a lot these days.

Turning Sixty

About two weeks ago, my personal odometer ticked over into a new decade, and your very irregular correspondent turned 60. It's an unreasonable age, an unfathomable age. I grew up with a father who died in 1979, in his mid 40s (I was 18, the eldest child) and on some level I assumed 45 was gonna be a good solid guess in terms of my lifespan. To this day, my regular subconscious shower exclamation is "I'm 40 years old" as if that fact alone was beyond belief. So here I am at 60 . . .

I blow hot and cold on the birthday thing. In previous year's I've gone dark around this time of year - removing the date from Facebook, turning off the ability to post on my timeline. After a few years of more openness, this year I returned to form, and my birthday flickered past relatively quietly on social media.

It was not an uneventful day, however. First, I spent the last day in my 50's at a CVS in West Hartford, getting my J&J COVID-19 vaccination. I can think of no better gift to myself. No serious side effects - a little tired, just the hint of a possible headache. I took my birthday off from teaching which was the right decision. I'm two weeks out, gonna wait another week or so to consider myself fully vax'd, but all good there.

On my birthday proper, I was awoken (literally, I was sleeping off the vax and the phone rang, inviting me to look out the window) by two friends who made the long trek into New Britain with mylar balloons, coffee, cupcakes. I went out in my PJs to fetch my booty and thanks them, but when I realized they were hanging out talking, I put my coat on and went out to visit. That was a lovely way to start the day.

I'm generally not a fan of mylar balloons, professionally or ecologically. I've seen way too many videos of mylar balloons causing power line arcs (power engineer YouTube porn) and pick up too much litter to not be invested in keeping balloons out of the ecology or the ocean. My "6" and "0" balloons are safely inside, still buoyant, and continuing to make me smile, attached to my banister and floating up into the unused space above the stairs (the only place they were not in the way in my too small condo). Rest assured they will stay out of trouble once their useful life is over. 

Other highlights of the day - a zoom call with many friends. A tribute video with many more (organized by my morning visitors, who reeled in many old friends, new friends, and family members). Totally made me cry. An unexpected box contained a large plush Baby Yoda / Grogu; one of those things you don't know you want until you get it. At this point in life there are so few unexpectedly happy surprises - if I want something, I get it. So kudos to brother Kevin for nailing it. I think the only thing that might have beat it is a puppy. 

Also several bouquets of flowers (one the day before, one the day of), lots of cards and gift cards (which I promise to use*), and the day after, a large bag of healthy food (entree, salad, soup, dessert) to nourish me for a few days.

I'm not someone who puts much stock in numbers - 40, 50, 60, all pretty much the same. On a warm summer morning, rolling across the state to chase a balloon with the windows open and 70s music via SiriusXM, I'm not too far removed from 18 year old me, with all my baggage but the universe ahead of me. 

* So about the gift cards. I have some sort of weird thing about them - I rarely spend them, keep them nicely tucked away in a business card portfolio. Not really sure what that is all about.

Part of it is, I get myself what I need / want, so there's rarely something I'd buy myself if I had the funds. Part of that is some sort of hoarding, having struggled financially, there's a sense of putting them away for a rainy day. Part of that is being a lone wolf - I don't have a posse of folks I go out to dinner with so restaurant cards site waiting for a social moment that never arrives. Part of it is perhaps a feeling of unworthiness of the often generous gift, being unable to accept the love behind it. And part of that is that my retail grooves are pretty well worn, so even something like a Home Depot card (I go to Lowe's most often, in recent times) will sit unused until I consciously think of something I need. And for other things - stores I've never actually set foot in, well, it's a stretch to get me to use 'em.

I literally have a note in my "in case of death" letter that tells my heirs to find the portfolio and spend down the cards. Maybe a good goal for year 60 is to spend them on myself and my friends....