Hammock T Makes It to New Mexico
July 20, 2008
Although other Hammock employees have traveled to Italy and Israel this summer, we're in New Mexico. Here's a picture of me wearing my Hammock tee in the Petroglyph National Park. Being a nature lover, I saw jack rabbits, road runners and lizards in the park.
Don't Litter
June 18, 2008
As everyone around Hammock Inc. is aware (sometimes painfully), I am passionate about preventing litter. I generate so little trash that I don't have a trash can in my office.
I recently attended a Metro Beautification and Environment Commission retreat. Here are some of the highlights:
Shawn Bible, the Beautification Coordinator for TDOT, was one of our speakers. I learned that TDOT spends over $6 million of taxpayers’ money each year to pick up litter off highways. And the streets are still a mess!
There is going to be a revival of the Adopt-A-Highway program in Tennessee. This is a program where a civic group adopts a couple of miles of highway to clean up three or four times a year. I see a great Team Hammock opportunity here.
Shawn spoke about how billboards are a multimillion dollar business and won’t go away. If you find them annoying, just live with it.
Tennesseans can also apply for grants to beautify highways in the Tennessee Roadscape Program.
Edith W. Heller, our state leader for Keep Tennessee Beautiful, spoke about how KTnB.org is the gold standard among states in the Keep America Beautiful program. Every county in Tennessee participated in the Great American Cleanup last year. No other state had every county participate. Over 25% of the citizens of Tennessee were part of a Great American Cleanup group, too. Around 25% of Hammock Inc. employees participated in an event in May.
From Ms. Heller's talk, I learned that a group is working to reduce the amount of cigarette litter (butts) in downtown Nashville.
The worst litterers are between 18-34 years old. This is a horrible statistic. Luckily, KTnB.org utilizes social media tools to target this group.
After the retreat, I’m encouraged that much is being done with school programs to discourage children from becoming litterers. I learned that there are lots of groups who care and who are working to solve the problem. Unfortunately, I hate that my tax dollars are going to clean up someone else’s trash.
One of the greatest things I learned was that Tennessee passed a litter law last summer, TCA 39-14-5. Officer Kevin Kennett of the Litter Patrol of the Tennessee Highway Patrol, also spoke to us.
The Tennessee litter law is online at www.ktnb.org/educationalresources.
Officer Kennett went over a few highlights of this law:
1. Getting caught tossing a cigarette butt up to five pounds of litter is punishable by a $50 fine and 40-hours of community service.
2. Criminal littering is tossing anything from 5-8 pounds on the roadways. The fines are more.
3. Aggravated criminal littering is 10 pounds or more. And the fines are even more.
I learned that 30% of the litter on our roadways is deliberate littering. Joe Smoo eats lunch in his car and tosses the McDonald’s bag out the window.
Now, 70% of littering comes from trash blowing out of open bed pick ups that over 40% of Tennesseans drive. In Tennessee, “motor vehicle{s}…shall be required to have such materials in an enclosed space or fully covered by a tarpaulin.” Officer Kennett is working with local police officers to make sure that this law is enforced. There is also a law that there must be 4" of clearance in the truck bed. Thus, loose litter must be contained within the back of the truck and covered by a tarp.
I Got a Name
May 14, 2008
My mother didn't want her children going through life with nicknames. Her son Charles wasn't Charlie; Deborah wasn't Debbie, and I wasn't Barbie, Barb or Babs. In my 30s, I had one close friend who called me Barb, a practice I neither criticized or encouraged. I ignored it as we drifted apart.
When I joined Hammock Inc. in 1999, I began to travel to printing plants in Wisconsin and Minnesota regularly. In the Midwest, I quickly learned, everyone named Barbara is Barb. Although I am the client, no one at the plants ever asked before posting a sign:
Welcome
Barb Mathieson
to (insert name of printer here).
This week, I traveled to QuadGraphics to press check MyBusiness magazine. The chauffeur, who drove me from the airport to the Quad Plant to pick up my car, told me that the car reserved for me had my name on the dashboard:
Yes, it did. It had my exclusive Midwestern name, Barb.
Editor's Note: If an abrupt monosyllable nickname isn't bad enough, I recently read that Barbara is included in those names of women who are "of a certain age." No one under forty is named Barbara, unless you're my coworker Barbara Logan, who was named after her mother: a woman, of course, of a certain age.
Color Control Freak
March 26, 2008
Recently, I attended an x-rite seminar on color. This is the second seminar I have attended on color presented by x-rite. Photographer Phil Nelson, who has also worked for Adobe and Apple, moderated the program on color psychology, color trends, color theory, spot color, color palette tools, monitor color, application color set up and color printing.
These seminars are very helpful for learning about new instruments (the ColorMunki) and new systems (the Goe Guide to Color) to control color management. One of the valuable things I learned is how to calibrate computer monitors to make them as color accurate as possible. Patrick Burns at Hammock Inc. knows this, but it's valuable to have another person capable of this.
Color control is very important in the magazine production process. It's important that the computer monitors that our artists and editors use accurately reflect as closely as possible what the printing presses can print. As we now prepare all our files for the printers we use, it's essential that the PDFs we supply the printers are made using the same color management profiles.
About Barbara
November 26, 2007
Barbara Mathieson has been Hammock's director of production since 1999. A graduate of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville with a B.A. in English literature, she is the only Hammock employee who chose her college based on the national ranking of the football team.
Barbara invests her time at Hammock making sure that the newsletters and magazines get printed and delivered on time. Press checking is one of her favorite job tasks, as she has perfect color perception, something only 10 percent of the population has.
An animal lover, Barbara is a docent at the Nashville Zoo at Grassmere on weekends. She and her husband John enjoy their own menagerie, which has included cocketiels, a dog, cats, a lizard, a frog and several snakes.
She also enjoys music, movies, reading, hiking, cycling, traveling and working out. Impressed with Rex and the Rexblog, she has attempted three blogs. Her current one about trash and litter is The Earth Is Not a Trash Can.
