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Return to Geddes, SD

me mom cornBennett-sisters600My mother grew up with four sisters and a brother on a farm near Geddes, South Dakota. We spent many holidays and vacations on that farm with Grandpa, Grandma, Aunt Lois, Uncle Mel and cousin Wally. Aunt Mary and Uncle Albert lived nine miles north in Geddes. Their daughter, cousin Betty and her husband, Babe, are there now. I had not been back since my mother’s funeral in 2005. I should say, I had not been back physically because my memories take me back quite often. America in the 1950’s was a very special time. Childhood makes everything rosier. My rosy memories were not milking cows, collecting eggs, riding horses to count cattle, opening gates or pitching hay. I was not cut out to be a farmer. My cousin Wally was. He and his son Jay, still run the family farm, aka “The Farm.”

ruby-wally600thefarm-bybessie600What is special about The Farm, aside from the people, is the place. It is very productive farm land that becomes more rolling as you near the Missouri River. The farm is about five miles from the river, where we fished, swam, boated and where I learned to water ski. In South Dakota you really experience nature (yes, hunting) and the seasons. When growing up there, that all seemed inevitable, but now that I have lived in a New York City apartment for thirty years, I know it is not.

My mother’s generation is all gone. I am the youngest of my cousins. In the spring, Ruby–the wife of my cousin Wally–was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It was a shock. She was in her 70’s, but this was much too soon. Ruby was so vibrant. She made this world a better place.

It was time to return. I wanted to see everyone again and see how the place that loomed so large in my memories had changed or remained as I remembered.

When I was in college, I had learned that the time to visit was over Memorial Day weekend. Geddes, like most small towns, continues to come together on this holiday and honor those who have served in the U. S. military. It is a tradition that just doesn’t exist in larger towns. I have done this about four times. Families gather. The women provide food at the school or community center. People return, like myself, from all over America. It is very Norman Rockwell. Lots of memories. Or as we say in SoDak, a great time to “swap lies.”

Unexpectedly, the best part of this trip was meeting the next generation–my cousins’ children, grandchildren and their families. I have the skeptical eye of one from Gotham, but I feel a real connection to this place and these people. It might be that everyone has those feelings about their childhood home and roots, but that is grist for another blog post.

I didn’t do any drawing. I took photos and video. I have been using my iPod Touch for making photos and video. It is a style I want to develop. Fast and impromptu. I wouldn’t say this has been all that successful. The time was so short– four days. And connecting with my family was more important. But I do want to share and express it. But how?

This page using  Flickr Albums is my first solution. This is because you can embed both photo and video in the Flickr albums. But I don’t think this solution will stick. Check back. I will post notice here of my other attempts.

 

Backup Your Website on Bluehost

Database diagramI have my prejudices. I like to use WordPress to build websites and I like to host those sites on Bluehost. WordPress uses a database to store most of the website information. I use a plugin to backup that database information once a week. This is a safety measure and it is important to backup the database whenever you upgrade WordPress. If something were to go wrong, like a digital hiccup, the database backup would be there to rebuild your pages and posts.

Now I should point out that in four years of building more than one hundred sites, this has never happened to me. (Thank you Deity of Your Choice! Mine is the Flying Spaghetti Monster.) But what if the hosting server were to malfunction in some horrible way? This has come up in discussions we have had at the New York WordPress MeetUp Group I belong to. Buried in the fine print (which I rarely read) of almost all the hosting plans for small sites, it says that they are not responsible. They, being most web hosts. Again, this has never happened to me, but when someone tells you about how it happened to them, it is very scary as you think of all the hours it would take to rebuild a site. It would be a nightmare on those sites where I have the design on my computer, the client has the photos on his/her computer and we have to use the database to retrieve the blog and page text.

Blue Host Site BackupFear not! This Spring Bluehost remedied that by offering a site backup service called Site Backup Pro. It sounded very promising so I first searched to see what opinions others had with Site Backup and found this excellent article by Don Campbell: Backup and Restore Your Website with Bluehost. It even includes a video tutorial by Don.

I was convinced. I signed up and am recommending it to all my clients. Hopefully we will never need to use it, but $13/year is a bargain for this insurance.

WordPress App for the iPhone

iphone320wpThis is pretty sweet. I am writing this post from my iPod touch. I was schmoozing with Brad Williams of WebDevStudios at WordCampNYC today about iPhone apps. I knew he had Bump and I would like to have tried it but I took it off my Touch. Being WordCamp, Brad asked if I had the WordPress app. What? I didn’t know. He told me to be sure and get WordPress 2. I just did and this is my Hello World. So let’s save this puppy and move on before the Colts/Pats game begins.

UPDATE: That worked well. I didn’t try adding photos yet, but will. What I can not do with the WordPress app on my iPod, is make a link. So now I will make a link to Brad and WebDev while editing/chained on/to my desktop ‘puter looking out onto Broadway. It’s a beautiful day. The Colts prevailed!!!

Damn That Spam

Spam stats from the February 2009 report
Spam stats from Net-Security Org

About six months ago I started receiving spam emails from kbs(at)kennethbsmith.com that I most certainly did not send. They appeared to originate in China because they were promoting an ecommerce site that had a lot of Chinese letters in the headlines and captions. Since then I have been receiving more and more emails from kbs(at)kennethbsmith.com. I am not using the “@” symbol because I believe that they (the bad guys) can get my email address from anyplace that has it listed publicly, like this blog post. A bot can harvest it, put it on a list and then that list is sold to whomever. You have probably noticed that many netizens disguise their email address in this way. This has also resulted in me relying more on Yahoo! and gmail for my email correspondence. So many email accounts. So little time.

Sadly, spam is part of internet life. And is seems to be getting worse. I recently read that 75-85% of all email is spam. (Net-Security Org spam stats) Geesh! Googling, I see there is even a Spam-o-meter! Curretly 88.5%

Yesterday I received an email from a client who had just received spam from herself. (I looked and I had also received spam promoting 1001 Postcards From: kbs(at)kennethbsmith.com.) She wanted to know what she could do.
Continue reading

Magazine Writing and Design

Last Thursday, May 15, I visited Jamie Malanowski‘s Marymount Manhattan class Writing for Magazines. Jamie was my editor in the Notebook section of Time magazine for two years and he asked me to share my ideas (and war stories) about the relationship between designer, editor and writer. I had never done this before, nor had I heard of any design peers talking to editorial journalism classes. It is a great topic and shows (once again) Jamie’s originality and insight.

I talked about the shared goals and  the dynamics of the art director/editor relationship. There was good discussion about using design, photography and illustration to make the page inviting, engage the reader and maximize the impact of the article.

thinking-with-type-ellen-lupton-paperback-cover-artOne reason I am posting now is to add some thoughts I had about this subject, post class discussion . One book I thought the class might want to look at is Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students, by Ellen Lupton (Princeton Architectural Press, 2004).

Another is The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst. This might be of less practical interest to writers but as it is a typographic bible, written by a poet-turned-designer, I am mentioning here. I learned a lot from his thoughtful approach to reading words and how they should be used on a “page.” His basis is the spoken word. Now there is also The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web.

I wish I had asked how many in the class have blogs? Besides the obvious educational benefits to them as magazine writers, I think this is a perfect opportunity for them to deal with their words and design.

I also believe they should all be photographers and even know how to shoot video. That would have been a lively discussion.

This is a good place for me to archive links to relevant topics about magazines and journalism. I will start with these:

Bill Moyers: Buying the War
Bill Moyers: Stopping the Presses; David Simon
NYTimes: Online Publisher scribd.com

Netizen of Elsewhere, USA

Elsewhere, USA

In early January, I received an email from Dalton Conley announcing that he would be at a Barnes & Noble in Greenwich Village reading from his latest book “Elsewhere, USA.” I have known Dalton for thirty years. He was twelve years old when his father and I became friends while working together. In 2002, I got to know Dalton even better when he asked me to design a website for him that organized the books and papers he had authored.  It was then that I read his memoir “Honkey.” Dalton was beginning his professorship in the sociology department at  New York University. Currently he is the acting dean.

As an artist, books about zeitgeist like Christopher Lasch’s “The Culture of Narcissism” and David Brooks’  “Bobos in Paridise” have always inspired me. I don’t know if Dalton’s book will meet that standard but listening to him talk provoked me beyond my expectations. I went to his reading out of curiosity and support but given how much my work and thoughts this past year have been about computers, the internet, websites and blogs, I was fascinated to hear Dalton, the sociologist, address these issues from a historical and cultural perspective. Continue reading