KD^3C^3 - 20251123 Surrounding the mind
I fixed a thing this week. My office chair has gotten a little worn over the last 5 years of ownership. It’s a good chair, although quite creaky. Sturdy but it makes noises tat can be heard outside.
The seat in particular is quite worn, not surprising since the seat is the primary part of most chairs. It’s a cloth covered foam seat, you generally know the kind. ne particular spot has worn through the cloth, mostly because of how I sit. the foam has been wearing through too. So I figured I could fix it.
I took a pair of worn out pants, and cut out one of the pockets. And after only a couple hours of looking for it off and on, I was able to locate the spool of black thread I have used to fix other items of clothing in the past (mostly splitting seams or small holes). Then I went to town sewing the pocket/patch onto the chair seat. I don’t really know how to sew, but I know that if you apply enough thread and don’t really care how it looks, you can do a decent enough job. Which is what I did. The final results aren’t great, but it works well enough. I hope.
While I as sewing, but also just more generally this week, I was watching some stuff on PBS. A couple different youtubers I follow did videos related to public media, and John Oliver had a segment about it too, on last week’s Last Week Tonight. You know PBS is pretty great, right?
I watched some episodes of Antiques Roadshow, which is always fun. Each segment is structured like a little history sketch, you get some cool info about a piece of history, and then you get the punchline: how much the thing might be worth. No matter what number comes up, it’s always a little bit surprising, and a perfect piece of punctuation to move onto thee next item.
I also watched a couple episodes of Great Performances. If you’re a theater geek like me, Great Performances is a wonderful series that gives you access to see some absolutely, well, great performances. Often times if you live in The Woods like I do, there isn’t much of a chance to see broadway quality theater. We have some local theaters and they do good work that I like watching, but the big names and big shows aren’t coming around very often.
For example, this year in New York City the Public Theater’s free Shakespeare in the Park was Twelfth Night with an absolutely stacked cast, it was full of names you probably know like Sandra Oh, Peter Dinklage, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and Lupita Nyong’o. Twelfth Night is probably in my top 5 Shakespeare’ so I would love to be able to see it. And since it was recorded and released on Great Performances, I can!
The actual production didn’t live up to my expectations, I have some quibbles about the directorial and design choices being made but It’s cool that I even get to have those opinions because I got to see the play.
I also queued up the latest West End production of Next To Normal, a pulitzer prize winning musical about a family dealing with severe mental illness. I remember when the original broadway production won the Tony for best musical and I’ve heard the original broadway soundtrack, but now I can watch the show come to life. Thanks, PBS.
I did have to make a donation to my local PBS Station in order to watch the latter show, though. But I was happy to do it. aA lot of stuff on PBS.org is completely free to watch, but some of it gets moved behind the PBS Passport paywall, which requires a $5 monthly donation (or more, if you’re feeling generous) to unlock. But since that money goes directly back to our local PBS station rather than some billionaire’s pocket, it’s a payment I’m happy to make.
If this sounds like public media propaganda, that’s because it probably is. You should watch more public media. Unless you’re not part of the public, I guess.
If you'd like some more here's the John Oliver segment and a video ranking PBS Kids Shows by an adult.
The seat in particular is quite worn, not surprising since the seat is the primary part of most chairs. It’s a cloth covered foam seat, you generally know the kind. ne particular spot has worn through the cloth, mostly because of how I sit. the foam has been wearing through too. So I figured I could fix it.
I took a pair of worn out pants, and cut out one of the pockets. And after only a couple hours of looking for it off and on, I was able to locate the spool of black thread I have used to fix other items of clothing in the past (mostly splitting seams or small holes). Then I went to town sewing the pocket/patch onto the chair seat. I don’t really know how to sew, but I know that if you apply enough thread and don’t really care how it looks, you can do a decent enough job. Which is what I did. The final results aren’t great, but it works well enough. I hope.
While I as sewing, but also just more generally this week, I was watching some stuff on PBS. A couple different youtubers I follow did videos related to public media, and John Oliver had a segment about it too, on last week’s Last Week Tonight. You know PBS is pretty great, right?
I watched some episodes of Antiques Roadshow, which is always fun. Each segment is structured like a little history sketch, you get some cool info about a piece of history, and then you get the punchline: how much the thing might be worth. No matter what number comes up, it’s always a little bit surprising, and a perfect piece of punctuation to move onto thee next item.
I also watched a couple episodes of Great Performances. If you’re a theater geek like me, Great Performances is a wonderful series that gives you access to see some absolutely, well, great performances. Often times if you live in The Woods like I do, there isn’t much of a chance to see broadway quality theater. We have some local theaters and they do good work that I like watching, but the big names and big shows aren’t coming around very often.
For example, this year in New York City the Public Theater’s free Shakespeare in the Park was Twelfth Night with an absolutely stacked cast, it was full of names you probably know like Sandra Oh, Peter Dinklage, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, and Lupita Nyong’o. Twelfth Night is probably in my top 5 Shakespeare’ so I would love to be able to see it. And since it was recorded and released on Great Performances, I can!
The actual production didn’t live up to my expectations, I have some quibbles about the directorial and design choices being made but It’s cool that I even get to have those opinions because I got to see the play.
I also queued up the latest West End production of Next To Normal, a pulitzer prize winning musical about a family dealing with severe mental illness. I remember when the original broadway production won the Tony for best musical and I’ve heard the original broadway soundtrack, but now I can watch the show come to life. Thanks, PBS.
I did have to make a donation to my local PBS Station in order to watch the latter show, though. But I was happy to do it. aA lot of stuff on PBS.org is completely free to watch, but some of it gets moved behind the PBS Passport paywall, which requires a $5 monthly donation (or more, if you’re feeling generous) to unlock. But since that money goes directly back to our local PBS station rather than some billionaire’s pocket, it’s a payment I’m happy to make.
If this sounds like public media propaganda, that’s because it probably is. You should watch more public media. Unless you’re not part of the public, I guess.
If you'd like some more here's the John Oliver segment and a video ranking PBS Kids Shows by an adult.