11.30.05
The Christmas tree expert at Mother Earth Gardens ties down our new tree for the trip home.
Three things for which I’m thankful:
- Fresh snow
- Windshield wiper fluid
- Thomas the Tank Engine videos
11.29.05
The winter wind has arrived this morning with a grim attitude; though it’s not as viciously cold as a Minnesota winter can be (still twelve above zero even with the wind chill, but doesn’t everything between 20 above and absolute zero feel about the same?), there’s no denying that winter has arrived.
So on this blustery morning, three things for which I’m thankful:
- My Mad Bomber hat (ugly as sin, but warm as a blanket)
- Warm woolen mittens (apologies to Maria von Trapp)
- The less-than-half-a-block walk to daycare (which will still be a struggle of Admiral Perry proportions, I fear)
11.28.05
Another outtake from the Christmas card–Jack makes a lovely face.
Three things for which I’m thankful:
- Going back to work after a long weekend (not that I don’t love spending time with the boys, but sometimes it’s interesting to talk to people who aren’t obsessed with trains, and it makes me appreciate them more)
- John Dingley’s Sunday pub quiz at the Lake Street Garage (even though we didn’t win this week)
- Whole Foods-brand whole wheat tortillas (Kelly has recently experimented with shopping at SuperTarget, but the tortillas there are … disgusting …)
11.27.05
The day after Thanksgiving, we went to Mother Earth Gardens (“the pumpkin store”, since that’s where we got our jack-o’-lanterns) to select a Christmas tree. Normally, I’d prefer to wait until December, but Auntie Betsy had a tree up and the boys demanded it all the way home on Thursday.
It was a good setting for a Christmas card picture, so Kelly, in a rare moment of support for my habits, suggested I bring “the camera”. She probably meant a more normal camera, but I selected the Lubi since it had 9 shots left on it. This one didn’t make the final cut, but I like it all the same.
Three things for which I’m thankful:
- Mother Earth Gardens
- Kids’ movies that can entertain adults
- The smell of pine needles in the winter
11.26.05
Jack post-dive into a pile leaves.
Three things for which I’m thankful:
- Good books
- Good beer
- Russian cameras
11.25.05
Jack mid-dive into a pile of leaves.
Three things for which I’m thankful:
- Days off from work
- Charlie Brown holiday specials
- Leftover turkey
11.24.05
It is, of course, Thanksgiving, and we’re off to the various family things–mother-in-law’s for the next installment of the soap opera, then to Auntie Betsy’s house to eat pie and hang out with Granddad, visiting from Maine.
Taking a page from Hello, where “five good things” are listed every day, this seems a good time to start listing things for which I’m thankful. So from now until the New Year, I’ll name three things for which I’m thankful:
- Jack and Peter (though very individual, I get great joy from them as a unit as well)
- Kelly (who continues to put up with me)
- Granddad’s visit (I was able to eat supper in peace last night while the boys tormented him, though I think he actually enjoyed being tortured)
11.23.05
A lucky shot–I accidentally loaded slide film into the FED3 (I meant it to be used in my wife’s camera, which has a light meter and all that jazz) and shot the roll inside the Children’s Museum, including some tricky shots with colored lights, thinking it was plain old print film. Slide film is unforgiving about exposure–somehow I hit this one with the light meter built into my noggin.
11.22.05
07-09-2007: selected as a “Belligerant” favorite for Moody Monday
11.21.05
11.20.05
Jim at work on the “Rasterbator” project for Penny this summer.
11.20.05
Digging back into the archives a bit, here’s the late Lucky Girl grocery at 38th Street and Grand Avenue in Minneapolis. The sign is still there, but the storefront is now a consignment clothing shop (which has very clever window displays; perhaps I’ll try to stop there some time soon and capture those). This was taken with the FED3 on a winter evening, January or February I think.
11.19.05
Read more
Dipping into the past with this one--over a year ago, when I started my original site, this was one of the first pictures I posted. The boys continue to be fascinated with drinking fountains ("waterfalls" in their lingo); these were at IKEA, soon after the Bloomington, MN, store opened (oh those wonderful meatballs, and the scarily assimilative power of Scandinavian design furniture). [
Hide the verbosity]
’tis the last rose of summer
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred,
No rosebud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes,
To give sigh for sigh.
Thomas Moore, The Last Rose of Summer
11.17.05
11.16.05
.jpg "In Line")
Lakewood Cemetery, Minneapolis
11.15.05
Jack was a little less than enthusiastic about helping with the leaves. Piling them up for diving into, great; but putting them into the bag? Much less fun.
11.14.05
11.13.05
The grave ’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Andrew Marvell, To His Coy Mistress
More from my afternoon at Lakewood Cemetery, and my first color roll through the reversed-lens Hawkeye.
I wish that I had the Hawkeye 16 years ago, when I went to Highgate Cemetery in London. At the time I was a Trotskyite anarcho-syndicalist with Romantic leanings, so it started as a pilgrimage to Karl Marx’s grave. But the Romantic side of me quickly took over when I saw all those weeping angels and empty chairs and clinging vines on the old side of the cemetery; the modernist bust of Herr Doktor Marx on the new side was lacking in all manner of charm, like a socialist realist poster among pre-Raphaelite paintings (or Julia Margaret Cameron photographs, though I’d yet to discover her). If I ever go back, I’ll bring the Hawkeye along, plus a few rolls of Agfa 100, and make up for the lost opportunity.
11.12.05
Taken at Lakewood Cemetery with the Hawkeye, lens reversed; I just love the dreamy swirl and blur of the backwards-lens-Brownie.
Featured on the Daily Dickinson site.
11.11.05
Found near the Resource Center of the Americas, Lake Street and Hiawatha Avenue.
11.10.05
For a season that turns so cold so fast, autumn has incredibly warm colors.
Taken with the Lubitel on my lunch break.
11.9.05
From Mother Earth Gardens in South Minneapolis, again. It’s a cold, blustery morning, a rather sharp reminder of what’s on the way.
11.8.05
The pumpkins are gone from Mother Earth Gardens now; they’re clearing space for Christmas trees. Soon winter will be upon us.
11.7.05
At Mother Earth Gardens, 42nd Ave. and 38th St., in South Minneapolis–our favorite place for pumpkins and Christmas trees.
11.6.05
I’ve had some good luck with color film in the Lubi; I first tried it out last month at the Afton Apple Orchard, where I got the boys to pose among the pumpkins. They’ve since discovered “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!” which we watch several times a day for the fun of seeing Linus get rolled by the pumpkin in the opening sequence. Oh, to be four again…
11.5.05
There they stood, ranged along the hillsides, met
To view the last of me, a living frame
For one more picture! in a sheet of flame
I saw them and I knew them all. And yet
Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set,
And blew.
Robert Browning, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came”
(another of my obsessive pictures of Harry Wild Jones’ Washburn Water Tower, this one with the Lubitel)
11.5.05
Found at the Lakewood Cemetery; it was an incredibly sad, and oddly whimsical, and slightly absurd grave decoration, and much more interesting (and touching) than the usual wilting carnations. I hope that someday someone will leave a pumpkin at my grave…
updated 05/21/2007: third place selection in the Shutterday.com “Ground Score” category.
11.5.05
At the Cannon River Winery, Jack and Peter and our friends’ daughter Ella and son Samuel performed an impromptu interpretive dance recital on their little concert stage while we sampled some wine (a wonderfully crisp apple wine and even a wine made entirely with Minnesota-grown grapes).
11.5.05
Through the windows of the Bakery on Grand, on (of course) Grand Ave. South in Minneapolis.
11.5.05
One of my obsessions is the Washburn Water Tower in Tangletown. Another of my obsessions is crappy cameras. Here I combine the two with my “new” Sawyer Nomad (c. 1957); I think these may actually suffer from bad development as much as a bad camera, but they do have a certain mood to them.
11.4.05
Lake Nokomis autumn morning. Lubitel. A little late for work…
11.4.05
The other morning, as I drove down 28th Avenue S., I saw the most wonderful fog over Lake Nokomis. I had to stop and finish up the color roll in the Lubitel–after all, I wanted to drop off the Hawkeye color roll from the cemetery, and I was running a couple minutes ahead of schedule. Work can wait for fog…
11.4.05
A happy accident from the Holga; I think this was actually a developing catastrophe–you can see the circles from the backing paper–but there’s something magical about its imperfection.
11.3.05
The afternoon of my reading at the Coffee Gallery, I slipped out of work early and roamed Lakewood Cemetery with my Brownie Hawkeye. It was a gorgeous, bright autumn day, and the Hawkeye was loaded with color film; it felt very much like what the 19th century cemetery movement was all about, with the urban parks where the quick and dead can meet for a little relaxation.
11.2.05
This is Peter at the Children’s Museum of Maine in Portland. I took it with my mother’s old Yashica rangefinder–it’s the most incredible camera for low-light, no-flash candids, but I need to modify a battery for it to get it back out in circulation.
11.2.05
A Lubitel shot from the Afton Apple Orchard; I love the Lubi with color film, if only processing weren’t so pricy.
11.2.05
Ruined towers at the Mill City Museum, Minneapolis.
