I “cheated” and used my wife’s Maxxum for these pictures, with the built-in metering, because I didn’t want to do advanced math with some red filters, Acros film, and the Spotmatic.

Tomorrow we’re off for a week in the Maine woods with Granddad, at which point this site will be on auto-pilot, running some Maine scenes from last year’s trip. I’m not sure what this year’s trip holds in store–on my “to do” list are Old Orchard Beach, the Gray Wildlife Park, and, of course, my annual lobster.

^{Read more}

Sweet is the lore which Nature brings;
Our meddling intellect
Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things:–
We murder to dissect.
William Wordsworth, “The Tables Turned”

^{Read more}

A two-fer today, for the Tuesday’s Photos weekly challenge. This is a summer shot, of a Buddhist monk on the Stone Arch Bridge.

This photo, like liquors bar, has been named a Tuesday’s Photos Favorite! How’s that for respect? Be sure to view the other noted pictures in the Favs Archiv; great stuff.

World Pinhole Day is today, Sunday, April 30. I’ve taken a screwdriver to one of my Hawkeyes–it doesn’t really need a lens anyway–and I encourage everyone else out there to similarly mangle a camera for Sunday’s festivities. Show the world that all you need to take pictures is a box with a hole in it!

I used to visit the sculpture garden occasionally when I lived in Nordeast; it was a nice summer bike ride. But then I moved to the south side, bought a house, got married, and had kids.

The day before Easter I had an unencumbered few hours while Kelly was studying and the boys were at Auntie Kathleen’s house, so I took the train downtown and hiked through Loring Park. I hadn’t been to the Walker for five years or so, and I felt like a tourist. Well, not quite as much of a tourist as the people who were posing for pictures in front of the Spoonbridge, trying to make it look like they were taking a bite out of the cherry or holding it in their fingers. Such fun. I may have some shots of the shenanigans taken with the Spotmatic; we’ll see how they come out.

This was taken with the Nomad–it’s what the cherry might have looked like if it had been built in 1951 instead of 1991.

This is an American Cream draft horse, the only draft horse breed developed in the United States. Alas for the breed, it was developed in Iowa in 1911, at the tail end of the draft horse’s reign in the field; in a very short time tractors replaced them, and many of these heavy horses ended up at the glue factory.

In graduate school, I spent a lot of time playing with the 19th century census books–the Krannart Library at Purdue had a great shelf of them. My favorite statistical game was calculating religious diversity in midwestern cities–that was part of my thesis. But I also liked the ratio of mules to horses as an indicator of rural poverty. Because people would rather have a horse than a mule, but mules are cheaper, this number really shows which farmers were doing well–the ones in Iowa, for example–and which were doing poorly–the Deep South and New Hampshire pop out.

I’m a city kid, so I don’t know much about mules or horses. But standing close to one of these draft horses, you understand what power they hold–this is a machine for breaking up sod, dragging logs, and moving rocks, and you’d need a team of mules to equal it.

Another from March 13–Riverview Cafe.

The Million Writers Notable Stories have been announced by storySouth! My story Self Defense, published in Pindeldyboz, made the list, as did many fabulous stories from around the web. Set aside some time to sample the stories on the list; you won’t be disappointed.

The Top 10 will be posted on April 1.

These are some tools that used to belong to my great-grandfather, Forrie Wall, a carpenter, orchard-keeper, house-builder, surveyor, and general jack-of-all-trades from Tenants Harbor, Maine. He was the model of Andrew Wyeth’s “The Man from Maine”, and one of Wyeth’s guides to the coastal villages.

I actually met Wyeth, when I was about four; he was at Grampy’s house with one of his models, a town drunk with a bristly white beard, and I was certain that this strange man had brought Santa Claus to visit. At least that’s the story my mother told me, since all I really remember about the house in Tenants Harbor is the Franklin stove between the kitchen and the parlor and Grampy’s stocking feet propped up on it.

Don’t forget–the 2006 Million Writers Award starts taking nominations TODAY. Start thinking about the stories published on-line in 2005 that deserve the nod! (If you’ve got one you’d like to spotlight, let me know through a comment or e-mail).

At the St. Paul Children’s Museum, taken during Saturday’s “120 Challenge“. The tinfoil things were a project conducted by their 8-year-old friend Noah, who is apparently studying the Borgias–they’re Renaissance medallions, don’t dare call them anything less. And the crown on Peter was a pre-school project that he insisted he had to wear to the party. Peter has a great future ahead of him in musical theater, I think.

Don’t forget–the2006 Million Writers Award starts taking nominations on February 15. Start thinking about the stories published on-line in 2005 that deserve the nod! (If you’ve got one you’d like to spotlight, let me know through a comment or e-mail).

Up Six vintage store, 157 N. Snelling (south of I94), St. Paul.

Don’t forget–the2006 Million Writers Award starts taking nominations on February 15. Start thinking about the stories published on-line in 2005 that deserve the nod! (If you’ve got one you’d like to spotlight, let me know through a comment or e-mail).

Another summer memory: Jack at Portland Head Light. It’s not quite the Wyeth painting (Wyeth was a friend of my mother’s family–more on that someday), but Jack’s pose reminded me of Christina Olsen a bit.

Yesterday our neighbor Dave, Erin’s husband, came over to help with my storm window project. Two of the windows went in last weekend without a hitch, but two more turned out to be 1/4″ or so too wide. Damn old houses and their characteristically inconsistent measurements. But Dave is a carpenter by trade, and in no time those windows were in place and ready to calk. I’m such a pathetic handyman.

Three things for which I’m thankful:

1. Good neighbors with useful skills
2. Choo Choo Bob’s Train Store, 2050 Marshall Avenue, St. Paul–Santa does all his shopping there
3. “Easy” to assemble gingerbread house kits

Be sure to check out the current issue of JMWW!

Washburn Water Tower, Minneapolis.

Three things for which I am thankful:

1. Little Debbie snack cakes
2. Drake’s cakes (though they’re hard to find out here in the Midwest)
3. Ring Dings

07-09-2007: selected as a “Belligerant” favorite for Moody Monday

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.

^{Read more}

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.

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.

Found near the Resource Center of the Americas, Lake Street and Hiawatha Avenue.