SCALES #64: float-glass
Hello!
I hope you’re all able to be looking out for your health and the health of those around you.
For the past few nights, my mind in all its wisdom has decided to stay up by racing through thoughts about places. Of course as far as things to have my mind stuck on, I’m grateful it has been something pretty benign. But it’s also something I’ve never experienced before. Whirring and clicking like a projector through memories of locations: Madison bike paths, Zürich trams, Camberville coffee shops, Bari beside the sea, roads on Prince Edward Island, small towns in Luxembourg, Pioneer Valley restaurants, foggy fields of sugar beets surrounding the path to a German lab, museums, conferences, friends’ weddings—it just went on and on.
The feeling accompanying these images felt like the inverse of homesickness. I guess in a way that would be cabin fever, or maybe wanderlust, but it felt keener than that. It wasn’t just missing the feeling of leaving the house; it was tied up with specific memories, and knowing that right now this is as close I can get to these places.
So, here’s to all of us making through this time so we can revisit the places in our memories.
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You’re reading SCALES, a newsletter by me, Adam Birdsall, who lives on the very old American frontier, works in the Rubber City, and has thought a lot about particles in the atmosphere. The title is capacious on purpose. You can unsubscribe at any time (link at bottom), forward, subscribe, or reply!
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Links
“We’re stuck at home, making our own entertainment, so now seems like as good a time as any to tell you the story of the closest I ever came to winning a Grammy.” Proper Discord re-emerges from blog hibernation to tell a rollicking tale of music industry politics, the force of iTunes in the aughts, and polka.
chomp chomp continues to be my favorite baking/cooking/overextended-movies-as-MFA-metaphors newsletter:
"I am a pretty decent baker and an only somewhat decent cook, in part because when doing the latter I'm incapable of making adjustments. I'm like, "interesting... this tastes bad... too bad there is nothing I can do to fix it." baking is like––either it works or it doesn't! and you have deal with it! either you get baguettes or you don't."
Have I linked to the camera in the mirror? Here’s a recent one from the Corning Museum of Glass.
I’m so glad That One Reply All episode got its own Times profile: “We eventually realized that this one was secretly a documentary about late ‘90s alt-rock.”
John Herrman, in early February, on how market forces and a set of reasonable-seeming Amazon policies has led to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to become deluged by applications to trademark keyboard-mashed brand names like UGBDER.
"Here’s to Dr. Acton: may she rest somewhere tropical, by a beach—and healthy—soon.”
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Yard news
The latest from the magnolia:
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Thanks for reading! Take care,
—Adam