Overpass Mecca Part 2

Last night we returned to San José's Overpass Mecca, a glorious snarl of concrete ramps and streaming car lights that offers stunning photography opportunities. Once more we set up our D5000 to capture long exposure images, this time feeling a bit more confident in our process. Even so, the night was cold and we shivered with each set-up. Jenny'd take about ten minutes to compose her shots and try a few experiments while I'd scout the next location. During my turn, she'd search for her next inspiration (and update her Facebook pals!). Like that, we leapfrogged from site to site.

When doing night photography, I feel less guilty about employing photographic tricks to capture a sense of what I see. After all, the image in the camera viewfinder is almost invisible. The long exposures necessary to capture any kind of light already represent a sort of cheating. Then there's the choice of white balance, a tough issue when working under the city's yellow lamps, since different settings produce entirely different results. Finally, is the necessity of post-processing when the in-camera image is transformed to be viewable on a computer. More art that journalism, night photography is about capturing feeling rather than reality.

Taking these sorts of shots is not without some degree of risk. Remember, we're stumbling about a dimly lit crosshatch of road arteries that are not designed for pedestrian use. Abandoned junk and detritus, along with patches of dense, spiky vegetation, require careful footwork. Add a few wandering street-folk, and we pay close attention to our surroundings and our exit strategies. Then sometimes we'll spot a swell vantage point that requires us to hike along a high-speed roadway, the cars whizzing with only a concrete strip between us. When we get the shot, it's worth all the hassle.

I love the feeling of hoisting our reassuringly heavy tripod over my shoulders as Jenny and I search for new positions to set up our shots. Sometimes we'll spot a perspective and march towards it with confidence. Other time we'll wander aimlessly, searching for the right feeling. It's all for the production of dreamy, ephemeral images, but we also gain a genuine feeling of work and accomplishment as we climb up grassy hills and slide down rocky embankments. Jenny and I are continuing our tradition of urban exploration with theses photo shoots, and I can't wait to see what turns up next.



(Photographs by Andrew and Jenny Wood)

Matt and Marilyn

While attending services for Carl B. Mattson (Jenny's uncle), we enjoyed an opportunity to sit with family and flip through old photo albums. Given that my grandfather served in World War II, I've always felt a kinship with Jenny's family, especially since most of their young men also answered the call at one time or another. Turning those old pages, I loved hearing stories about the Mattson family patriarch, Einar (nicknamed Matt), who married a young woman named Marilyn and started a family that included a granddaughter named Jenny, whom I would eventually marry.

It amazes me to look at these old pictures because of how young Matt and Marilyn were. Seeing those bright, confident eyes, I can imagine that they felt much as Jenny and I did in our early years of marriage. They were separated by military service, as we were -- and then came the happy day when they reunited at last. The aging Western Union telegram doesn't say much about that day; it's a somewhat perfunctory announcement. But I can imagine the thrill that flimsy piece of paper generated, word that Matt was returning home at last after his years of service in the Pacific.

Jenny and I hardly endured the kind of hardship shared by her grandparents; my military service was in the peacetime Navy. Even so, I feel connected to her family as I look through those pictures. Turning page after page, I can envision two young people staring out over the decades, unable to know what challenges and opportunities would come their way. Of course, I can still talk with Marilyn, since her house continues to serve as the gathering place for family events. I enjoy asking her about her life and recollections. But sometimes there's nothing quite like seeing a picture from way back then to make it all real.

World's Fair Exhibit this October

This October, the National Building Museum is mounting an exhibit called Designing Tomorrow: America’s World’s Fairs of the 1930s. I can't wait to check it out, if only because I always have a good time at that Washington D.C. venue.

Back in 1999, I traveled to D.C. solely to check out my first NBM exhibit, See the USA: Automobile Travel and the American Landscape, and I had a swell time. Since my funding was modest, I decided to save a few bucks by sleeping in Reagan National Airport. That decision reaped surprising rewards.

Those two nights spent wandering around a bustling airport played a major role in inspiring me to write City Ubiquitous: Place, Communication, and the Rise of Omnitopia. After all, I was able to see first-hand how structure and perception meld in some places to create an environment stripped of locality, an all-place. And, of course, I would later find origins of omnitopia in world's fairs - especially the 1939-40 New York World's Fair.

So I feel a real connection to anything associated with the National Building Museum and hope to return this year. Who knows? This exhibit might spark my next book!

Learn more: Designing Tomorrow: America’s World’s Fairs of the 1930s

Carl B. Mattson

Over the weekend, we traveled to Florida to commemorate the passing of Jenny's uncle, Carl B. Mattson. He was a good guy, sorta quiet but whip-smart. Indeed, as family members mentioned a few dozen times during our conversations, this guy literally was a rocket scientist.

Carl spent the latter part of his boyhood years in Largo, Florida, home after his mother relocated a family of three boys and one girl (Jean, Jenny's mother) from Wisconsin following the untimely death of the family patriarch. Carl was raised to be independent and resourceful. And though he was a shy and unassuming person, he followed his father's example by enlisting for active duty during wartime.

Starting with a tour in the Vietnam theater, Carl applied his love of aircraft to a steadily increasing range of responsibilities, from painting planes to working as an engineer for the Space Shuttle program. He was such a humble guy that we found out only after his death that he'd patented a number of innovations and had won all sorts of awards for his work to improve the operations of the NASA clean room.

I'm sure there's much else about Carl that was unknown to most of his friends and family. He was a private person who generally went his own way in life. Family members shared stories about how he'd avoid doing drudge-work on the farm by reading. Some folks would get upset, but the elders knew best: "Just leave him alone," they'd say. They knew Carl's potential, and he knew what he was doing.

Along with savings to help his mother in her later years, Carl left behind a number of photo albums, mostly black and white shots of him in the service, boating with friends, and growing older. Toward the end of his life, a slow but cruelly determined disease wasted away at his mobility. Loved ones told him to pursue traditional medical remedies, but Carl insisted on managing his body just as he managed his life, on his own terms and in his own way.

His family worried for him, but the Mattsons have always been a live-and-let-live lot. They'll offer advice and help when you need it (I know this personally, and have benefited from their kindness on many occasions). But in the end, they let people go their own way. That's why so many conversations in Jenny's grandmother's house tend to drift off to comfortable silence.

I won't attempt the trite poetry of saying that Carl drifted off with similar ease. I wasn't there, and I can't know. His final years were undoubtedly tough and sometimes lonely. But he departed in a hospital bed surrounded by loved ones: those physically present and those, we can hope, waiting to take him to places where he can keep his head forever in the the clouds.

Update on Wood's Unsought Advice

Lately I've been inundated by time-crunch writing projects, and my bandwidth for blogging has taken the hit. But that doesn't mean that I'm abandoning Woodland Shoppers Paradise. Indeed, I'm pushing toward a decent first draft of a multipart series tentatively titled "Wood's Unsought Advice," which has been percolating for a few months now. Perhaps over the weekend I can make some progress and prepare to share it with you. No specific plans for when, but I'm hoping for "soon."

"Unsought Advice," is hooked on the idea that we can apply philosophical insights to contemporary workplace dilemmas. That's right, everyday stuff like how do deal with "Bungie-Bosses" or "zero-sum gamers" - or the dreaded game of salary negotiation "chicken." Oh, and how to keep a job in today's lousy economy.

Starting with Socrates (really, with Chilon), I've titled my first post, "Know Thyself." Subsequent posts are called "Seize the Mayhem," "See Things First As They Are," "Keep Secrets. Unless You Can't," "Tend Your Gardens," and "Perform Thyself." Can you guess the philosophers I chose to illustrate these topics?

I claim no uniqueness to my approach. Plenty of books out there do what I'm doing. But that's why my advice is "unsought." No one's waiting for it, But I'll share it all the same. At minimum, the series provides me an opportunity to work through a few ideas of personal interest. And if I'm lucky, maybe one reader will benefit from using ancient or modern philosophy to think through an office hassle. Worse case scenario: I'll reap some comments about just how far off the mark I am. Which is OK. I'm a sucker for helpful advice.

So keep your eyes on these space. "Wood's Unsought Advice" is coming.

How Star Trek Should Have Ended

Oh... This is good.



Can't see the video? Point your browser here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbJ-y6BWfUc&feature=player_embedded

Fall Back into Teaching

As I anticipate returning to regular classroom teaching this fall, I smile at the prospect of those "first days," the chance to meet new classroom cohorts and imagine them becoming communities of learning. My years directing the university Peer Mentor Program (wrapping up this May) have added a number of positive experiences to my life, along with plenty of useful skills to my repertoire. All the same, I am excited to get back into a more traditional classroom environment, at least for a while. Looking forward to that opportunity, I also look backward to undergraduate and graduate professors whose varied teaching styles are somehow mixed and mingled in my own professorial persona.

Back at Berry College, labeled by one of my mentors as a "little Ivy," I remember rich, polished staircases and an almost reverential hush when walking through Hermann Hall, and I recall one professor who brought an old school lecture style to his classroom. Surely I'm over-dramatizing the details, but I can still see this guy walking up to the podium and literally reading from a yellow legal pad. No videos. open-ended conversations. No class skits. Just a man reading his notes.

And his notes were scintillating. Again, this is a rosy memory distanced by more than 15 years, but I dug his classes. Listening to this fellow's recitations you could follow a complex line of thinking from point to point, concept to concept, objective to objective. There was no fluff and no razzle-dazzle. Just ideas, from his mind to yours. Some students hated the whole thing, of course, and I even made a little money running nighttime tutoring sessions for folks struggling to make sense of it all. Still, for all the classroom parties I've forgotten in other classes, I won't forget the lessons I learned by watching a professor work his ideas in front of us.

At the same time, I remember another professor, this time at Ohio University, who needn't have done more than read his published essays out loud to earn our regard. He was, and is, that well respected. Indeed, I remember one occasion when I was serving as his co-instructor (really as a glorified TA), when the professor announced, "Sorry, class, but there's no other way for me to cover this material. I'm going to have to simply lecture for the next hour..." He seemed genuinely apologetic about needing to lecture. The students didn't mind at all. His rare choice to lecture served as kind of a special occasion.

Moreover, one evening when I was taking one of his heavy theory classes, the kind in which doctoral candidates would sift through recently published essays and try to impress each other (and the prof, naturally) with down-inflected confidence, he said, "Look, I'm not sure how to make sense of these readings. We're going to have to explore this stuff together." Again, no one could doubt his gravitas, but I think I respected him even more when I saw his willingness to allow us to play inside one of his intellectual frontiers.

Striking that balance, locating myself along the continuum of knowledge-transference and knowledge-exploration, is a shifting goal, one producing an emergent persona that must adapt to the mood of the room and the objectives of the day. Sometimes I will necessarily plow through an idea; other times I'll cheerfully admit that I have no specific outcome for our interaction, that getting there will be all the fun. Both ways, and in others I can't quite anticipate, I will enjoy the adventure of teaching and learning. Honestly, I can't imagine having a better job.