Mmm, mmm good!

Heard on NPR today that the only company not to lose value in yesterday’s stock market high-dive was The Campbell’s Soup Company. Maybe everybody was thinking in the end some chicken soup might just make it all better.

On an even yummier positive note, 2/3 of the Republican Congress members found their lost spines and voted against the Lame-duck’s express wishes as to how they should vote on the $700 bil “bailout.” Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice.

Designer’s Triangle of Mystery.

A little nugget for all the designers out there. Was remembering an old typeset banner, that if I remember correctly was at an old typesetter shop in Nashville called D&T. “Good, Fast, Cheap. Pick any two.” Always stuck with me, kind of jokey, but more of a realistic mantra for the designer than anything else I’ve ever come across. The idea that if you choose two you always sacrifice the third...

Looked on the web and found this illustration at a site called sixside.com. They called it the “Designer’s Holy Triangle.” I think calling it “holy” is a bit much, but i like the way they’ve worded the explanation:























Good + Fast = Expensive
Choose good and fast and we will postpone every other job, cancel all appointments and stay up 25-hours a day just to get your job done. But, don't expect it to be cheap.
Good + Cheap = Slow
Choose good and cheap and we will do a great job for a discounted price, but be patient until we have a free moment from paying clients.
Fast + Cheap = Inferior
Choose fast and cheap and expect an inferior job delivered on time. You truly get what you pay for, and in our opinion this is the least favorable choice of the three.

Lehman Bros.

So I’m in Montgomery, Alabama visiting my sister a few weeks ago, and we’re out at this nice little outdoor live music gig at a downtown hotel. (A lovely night to be outside enjoying beer and music after fleeing Baton Rouge and the impending blowhard Gustav)

I notice this beautiful old (19th c.?) building across the street, the history of which nobody is quite certain. Maybe some cotton brokers from ages ago? There are a couple of peculiar statues on the roof, one of a large anvil, a female figure I think (an angel?), and a strange capsule-like thing rumored to contain a mysterious body...very Edward Gorey.

Turns out certain young Misters Henry, Emanuel and Mayer Lehman moved to Montgomery from Bavaria in the late 1840s and started a dry-goods business called Lehman Brothers. The brothers began to start accepting King Cotton as payment for dry goods and eventually began a second business trading in cotton.

By 1858, Henry had died of yellow fever and cotton trading had moved to New York, whence the two remaining brothers (pictured left) went and the rest as they say is history...

(and now so is Lehman Brothers?)

9-11-2001

After hearing “9-11” invoked as the rationale for any amount of lunacy over the past seven years, it’s easy to forget the actual horror of what happened that day.

I remember walking into Compass Records that morning in 2001 to deal with some job-related task, and hearing from my buddy David Haley what had just happened in New York. Never been one to turn on the news first thing in the morning, or I would have known.

I remember thinking...“Nah, that couldn’t have REALLY happened”...even after we all subsequently saw it on TV from every possible angle, until I just couldn’t look at it any more, couldn’t think about it anymore, couldn’t look at any more pictures in the New York Times of people who had died.

I remember the tense days and weeks following making sure everybody I knew in New York (and everywhere else) was accounted for.

I remember wondering what sort of people could perpetrate such a thing. Was it a well-laid terrorist plan gone well beyond belief, was it a fluke, was it a tremendous conspiracy?

After seven years that both seem like yesterday and seem like a creeping eternity, it’s almost impossible to make any sense of what happened through all the fog of information, near-information, and outright mis-information.

Today I bow in memory to those who died, those that keep dying daily...and try to picture a reasonable end to it all. Amen.