Head Volleyball Coach Jeff Meeker geeks music and high fidelity sound!

How (and when) did you start geeking music and Hi-Fi?

Growing up I was always involved in music, I sang in the choir, played bass drum in the marching band and remember cranking the soundtrack from “Grease” with my sister when we were young.   In high school I was a big into Led Zepplin and The Doors and purchased my first stereo.  In college, my first-year RA, Tremier Johnson had the biggest, baddest stereo I had ever seen…I was hooked!  He had three 15” woofers and an EQ that “bounced” with the beat.  His collection of early Hip-Hop and Rap also made an impact on my musical tastes.  In college, I was always the guy picking out the music.

In grad school I began working at a high-end audio store.  The most expensive sound-system I ever sold was in the $35,000 price range – talk about high fidelity!

I love music and a great audio system.  I like to think I am amateur DJ; my resume includes The Kindergarten Circus, Mini-Relay for Life, graduation parties, friend’s birthday parties and home volleyball matches–impressive huh!  My iDJ app on my iPad is pretty sweet.

What is your favorite thing about music?

My favorite thing about Hi-Fi and great music is simply its power to move emotion.  Music has the power make you happy, sad, or get you pumped up for a volleyball match.  We associate music with events, people or different periods of our lives.  I think your musical tastes are a reflection of who you are.   One of my favorite memories of our recent volleyball season was during our pre-season retreat.  We asked each player to choose an intro song, as if they were a major league baseball player walking to the plate…it was an early glimpse into their personality and a ton of fun!  My musical tastes are very diverse, from Flo Rida to Miles Davis, Kool Moe Dee to U2.

What’s one thing you think everyone should know about Hi-Fi?

Vinyl records actually sound way better than your iPod!  Music is so much more than the noise in the background while studying, walking to class or working out.  If you were to put together a “soundtrack” for your life, what music would you choose?

What do YOU geek? If you’d like to share what you geek with the Cornell community, contact imason@cornellcollege.edu.

Art Professor Tony Plaut shared what he geeks–mechanical art things!  Professor Plaut recently constructed a “block clock” which resides on the third floor of the library.  The clock keeps time according to the day and week of the block and is definitely a mechanical art thing.

How (and when) did you start geeking mechanical art things?

My first memory of that is receiving a little metal robot when I was in kindergarten or nursery school.  I loved it…and I took it apart.  Then, of course, I couldn’t put it back together.  But that’s what I do–I take things apart and I put them back together.

What is your favorite thing about mechanical art things?

My favorite thing about creating mechanical art is that I can bring many facets of myself to those tasks.  I can use my creative, imaginative part with the art side, and then I can use my technical and engineering skills on the mechanical side. I can also use my sense of humor in there…so it really brings together the full package!

What’s one thing you think everyone should know about mechanical art things?

They take a lot of careful planning…AND a lot of trial and error!

What do YOU geek? If you’d like to share what you geek with the Cornell community, contact imason@cornellcollege.edu.

Ellen Wrede, class of 2013, shared what she geeks–Dewey 640!

How (and when) did you start geeking Dewey 640?

I’ve geeked Dewey 640 for most of my life.  Dewey 640 is home and family management. There are a lot of “how to get your stains out with coco-cola” type books and I love that. Cookbooks are in there, crafty books are in there and sewing and knitting books.  It’s a lot of stuff that I geek, but all mixed into one place.

So I started geeking that when I was small, and it’s kind of gotten worse as I’ve gotten older (or better, depending on how you look at it).

What is your favorite thing about Dewey 640?

Everything.  It’s both Dewey Decimal System (it’s in a library!) and it’s representative of so many things that I love.

What’s one thing you think everyone should know about Dewey 640?

Geeking ANYTHING in the library is always worthwhile.  And it’s so handy!  I mean, who doesn’t want to know how to get grass stains out of their jeans with coco-cola?  That’s so handy to know.  And stuff like how to crochet mushrooms?  That’s in there too!

What do YOU geek? If you’d like to share what you geek with the Cornell community, contact imason@cornellcollege.edu.

Rachelle LaBarge, wife of President Jonathan Brand, sat down briefly with us to share what she geeks.

How (and when) did you start geeking NPR?

It’s been a long time…I’m trying to think of when I haven’t listened to NPR. Probably since college, certainly grad school, definitely when Jonathan was in law school.  Probably upstate New York was when it became sort of a permanent fixture in our lives.

What is your favorite thing about NPR?

It’s this feeling of multitasking accomplishment.  If I’m doing one thing, I feel like I should be doing two things.  And NPR enables me to do two things.

By listening, I feel like I’m getting my information in lots of ways.  In fact, Jonathan and I rarely watch television so if I’m not listening to the radio, I won’t get a lot of news.  I need it for that.  It’s hard for us to stay up and watch the news, and then the snippets are so unsatisfying, because they’re too quick.

And I also found, actually, that I became a very hardcore NPR fan when commuting to law school.  It was a long ride, and I really needed to develop my ability to take in information just from my ears–without anything in front of me.  And that was a great way to do it.  I noticed that when I started doing that again after not listening for a long time that it was hard for me to track a whole story and really think about what they’re saying.  It’s a skill and I think people are losing it. If they don’t do that on a regular basis, where they’re not relying on their eyes or somebody in front of them, it’s hard for people to follow a whole story just like that.

We have favorite stories, too.  There’s a This American Life story called, I think, Super Woman or Super Powers [You can listen to it here: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/178/superpowers].  It is amazing.  I think about this woman all the time.  It is about this young woman who, from a very young age, wanted to have super powers–like a hero.  Unlike most people who think of such things, she actually spent her life developing super skills. Mastering languages, martial arts, engineering and chemistry…she was like MacGuyver.  She had a very interesting story.

What’s one thing you think everyone should know about NPR?

I think it has something for everyone.

My daughter will sit and listen to stories.  You know those driveway moments?  Where you’re stuck in the driveway and the story’s not over? So you just sit there in your car and listen to it until the very end.  At the age of 12 she started sitting in driveways, listening to stories, because she wanted to know how they ended.

I think it’s great, for little kids especially, when everything is so visual and so fast all the time to have to sit.  I mean, these are great skills, to have to sit and be patient and listen for the story to unfold. We don’t do enough of that, frankly.

What do YOU geek? If you’d like to share what you geek with the Cornell community, contact imason@cornellcollege.edu.

How (and when) did you start geeking Sixteenth Century French Literature?

President Brand started to geek French Literature when he was in graduate school at the University of Michigan.  He had an amazing professor who was a leader in the field of sixteenth century French Literature.  Why the sixteenth century, in particular? The printing press was still relatively new, and French authors took advantage of the ability to produce many copies of works relatively quickly.  It was a creative period, because suddenly work was mass produced. What and how much you could do with the French language became a major theme in literature of the period.  ”I’m a huge fan of literature that says one thing, but does something else,” says Brand.  One of his favorite works, Gargantua and Pantagruel by François Rabelais is a story about two giants, a father and son, which uses large language to tell the story.  Unlike Medieval French Literature, which is very close to Latin, the works of the sixteenth century are close to modern French, so you can see the evolution of the language.

What is your favorite thing about Sixteenth Century French Literature?

“It shows the expansiveness and creativity of the French language.”

What’s one thing you think everyone should know about Sixteenth Century French Literature?

“It’s so much more enjoyable and playful than they might think!”

What do YOU geek? If you’d like to share what you geek with the Cornell community, contact imason@cornellcollege.edu.