Unearthing a life.....

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Off to the right here, I have changed the link to my photo storage site. The old site was on yaFro, but that host has been falling into all kinds of technical trouble and the site is practically 'froze up'. This new site is at Flickr and has much larger thumbnails. I need someone, from some other computer than this one, to click on the new link and see if it produces the photo thumbnail pages (click on thumbnails to get bigger versions) and then a message here to let me know that it is working okay (if it is).

.... and copper dog in repose.

I took 102 pictures during the couple hours I was in Port Townsend yesterday. On the first edit thru, I deleted 32 clunkers .... probably a dozen more will go down the chute after some thought and critical consideration. In the bright daylight (like yesterday's), I can't see the image in the square thing-a-mabob on the back of the camera, so I used the manual viewfinder throughout the shoot. I notice that when I do that, I end up with mostly vertical pictures .... if I use the thing-a-mabob, I shoot mostly horizontal pictures. I'm not sure why that is(?). All in all, I had a good day and a hamburger and fries at the Chimicum Cafe on the way home.

Back on June 6th, I posted a similar tribute to the Sophisticated Ladies of Seattle. Today I was shooting in Port Townsend ... and find, for the most part, that the Sophisticated Ladies of Port Townsend are a more eccentric bunch .... perhaps reflecting the overall artsy nature of the place.


Spotted this headless woman loitering on the sidewalk, withdrawn(?), not making eye contact with anyone ....

Miss Romantic here was all dithery over the roses that an admirer had telegraphed her ... but seemed content to remain on her brick wall for the time being ....

Yes, you guessed it! This is Hermione, Water Street's Invisible Bikini Babe. She can jut a hip with the best of them.

....and P.T.'s most famous lady, the Fountain Nymph. A few years back some blue-nosed half-humanoid took a sledge hammer to her and put her out of commission for a good long while. But she's back now ... gracefully restored.

Bookworm is conducting a Journal Writing Workshop for Women here at the old homestead today. The place will be overrun with damsels of every description. Writing damsels. Damsels of the word less traveled. Fair damsels and ferocious damsels.

Usually I hang around the edges of these events and make sure there's fresh coffee and hot water in the teapot and everything runs smoothly in the rest of the house, BUT .... today the sun is shining and the sky is relatively clear and my camera is lounging over there on the shelf, whispering "Take me to Port Townsend."

I think I will desert the damsels for a day.......

Some cages are more ornate than others. Some are practically invisible until you escape them ... and then you begin to sense their shape in the absences that flirt at the edge of vision. Cages enforce routines and routines embed themselves in the sort-of-automatic part of the mind. Then one day the cage is gone and the mind begins to trip and stumble around looking to regain its balance.

I've been in the 'cage' of being Aleister's weekday daytime caregiver for at least the past three years. He and I have developed a lot of routines together. Now it appears that I may get the summer 'off'. It hasn't happened yet, but it has been promised. And certain routines will be suspended and leave their ghosts behind.

One such happened just before I sat down to write this and was the inspiration for this piece. I suddenly snapped into alertness and thought "3:30! Time for me to get out front and meet Al's school bus." And as my body began its turn towards the door, I remembered -- "There is no school; his Mom picked him up an hour ago; he is not here." I think I'm going to be fighting off a lot of those false starts in the next couple weeks.

He was here this morning and we did motor out to Silverdale for his Thursday Speech Therapy appointment. We listened to the Talking Heads on the car CD player and held our noses when we drove by the mud flats. On the way home we dropped into Safeway to shop for food. Pretty routine ... EXCEPT!

....as I was wheeling the cart across the parking lot with groceries above and Aleister below, I was startled when a front wheel went BUMP! up over something. For about four beats, there was silence. Then he bellowed, "I'M BLEEDING!" and rolled off the cart's lower platform and out onto the pavement. Aleister hates to bleed. It sends him into a frenzy. And, indeed, he jumped up crying and displayed a spot of blood on his thumb.

Somehow - down there out of sight of me the cart driver - he managed to get a hand lowdown and in front of a wheel and I right ran over it with the combined weight of the cart, groceries, and grandson. The thumb damage was minimal. The one small bubble of blood remained one small bubble of blood. The adjacent index finger took more of a beating -- broken skin, but no bleeding ... and a fingernail beginning to turn black. Hey, hey! The Fruits of Summer!

At home, grandpa applied water and ointment and band-aids. I think he would have been better off leaving his wounds to the open air, but he puts a lot of stock in Band Aids. So they are de rigor in all cases involving traumatic loss of blood.

The problem with change is that it never stops. Michal is heading off to New Zealand. Rachel flew back to South Dakota to do whatever it is she does in South Dakota. Jessica graduated into Middle School this past week. FossilGuy may be headed for a summer with major time off from grandson daycare. Erin is putting out 'job feelers' to other colleges. But for this one brief moment, we all huddle together to get ourselves recorded digitally (above photo by Bookworm). And I wonder 'when' and 'if' we five will ever be gathered together again in one place.

Whatever. They are all gone home now and we can sneak back into our set routines and diets and TV programs. I enjoyed the weekend. My son David showed up at the graduation party and told me he decided to come only after I left him a phone message and said I was going to be there. I appreciate that. Michal said she would miss us and it would be strange not to be with us for Christmas (and she was gorgeous all day). I appreciate that. Rachel and Bookworm and I dined at the Azteca on Saturday night after the long drive home from Ferndale. Rachel entertained us at dinner with her hilarious impressions of South Dakota. I appreciate that. Jessica and I had lunch at the Azteca (again!) yesterday and it was an enjoyable time together and she ate heartily. I appreciate that.

Aleister is doing his final school day at Brownsville Elementary today. And now we'll see how the summer shakes out in regards to giving grandpa a break. I'd appreciate a break.

So Michal is kaput with high school. The Free Education part of life is over. A week after I graduated from high school, I came to Bremerton and began a job as an apprentice pipefitter in the Naval Shipyard. Next Monday Michal is flying off to New Zealand where she has a one-year job as a 'nanny' waiting for her. Such a thing would have been totally out of my frame of reference back in 1952.

Michal's mother (Erin) remarked that she was glad I got a new camera and was getting back to shooting the close-ups like I used to do with my film cameras. My 'in your ear' photography. I didn't realize that anyone but me liked these extreme close-ups. Thank you, Erin, for missing them.

At the graduation party, Michal said, "I'm really going to miss you guys. And Christmas will seem real strange not coming to your house."

Yes, it will, Michal. Stranger for you than us, I suspect ... when it dawns on you that it will happen in the middle of summer.

We had a good weekend with all the girls. Grand-daughter Numero Uno (Rachel) came back to Bremerton with us, spent a day, then flew off back to South Dakota. Grand-daughter Numero Tres (Jessica) is here now .... waiting patiently for me to finish this posting and take her to lunch at the Azteca Restaurant. Her Mom and Bookworm headed out for lunch and shopping an hour ago. So I'd better wrap this up.

FossilGuy and Bookworm after celebrating their thirty-eighth wedding anniversary with a no-holds-barred dinner at the new Anthony's Restaurant on the downtown Bremerton waterfront.

The picture above was supposed to accompany Bookworm's blog posting in regards to the above mentioned event, but it would not 'take' on her site. Her commentary about Anthony's Restaurant is, in my finely honed opinion, not only accurate, but marked by restraint. The ambiance and the clientele did not join seamlessly with the $100+ dinner tab.

In part, our thirty-eight years together have been built on a sturdy foundation of surviving such disappointments with a roll of the eyes and a shrug and maybe a barbed fragment of wit or two.

This is one of those times that cause we mature folk to experience time as "speeded up". Granddaughter Michal is graduating from high school today at Ferndale (north of Bellingham, up near the Canadian border). Her sister Rachel has flown in to the Bellingham area from South Dakota for the occasion. Mother Erin and younger sister Jessica arrived here yesterday from Vancouver, WA.

So Erin got up at five this morning and left at six to catch a ferry at Kingston so she could attend the actual graduation ceremony at eleven. Bookworm and Jessica and I will leave at 9:30 (in a half hour) and hope to get up there around 1:00 for the afterward party. Around 3:30 we will swap Jessica for Rachel and head back to Bremerton. Sunday Erin and Jessica will return to our house. Sunday evening we put Rachel on the airporter to SeaTac. Monday we are back down to Erin and Jessica .... but Allie comes back into the mix with his kindergarten field day.

No chance for confusion there......

In the continuing saga of my reduced caloric intake diet, I have reached a goal of sorts .... this morning I weighed in at 20 & 1/3 lbs less than when I started around the end of March. The real 'super goal' is only 1 & 1/4 lbs away. That will be the point where my weight, as read off the digital scales, will NOT begin with the numeral 2. What better way to celebrate than to post some photos of really fine ingredients displayed in the Public Market in Seattle.



First a Copper River King salmon to lay out upon the grill...

....and some tender spears of Eastern Washington asparagus, lightly steamed and shot with butter and lemon juice ....

.... and for dessert, a cold, crisp slab of watermelon straight from the frigid waters of the well pond.

Way back when I was a boy and lived in a Milwaukee Railroad company house, we had an icebox and a small icehouse where big blocks of ice sat buried in sawdust and slowly shrank away to nothing as summer hit its hottest. The icebox was not big enough to hold and chill the watermelons we consumed. So we would pump cold water out of the well into a small wellpond and float a half dozen watermelons in the pond. There were some U.S. Army Airforce bombing ranges a tad bit north of us and the maintenance crew would make it a habit to stop by for a ration of cold watermelon from our pond. Then they would delight us (kids) by geting out their rifles and doing target practice on sagebrushes near the top of the mountain to the immediate south.

The previously posted pix of the 'Poster Wall' in Post Alley were taken in the short east/west leg of the alley .... then it turns south in a sort of 'tunnel' past the Cinema and back out into the daylight. The pix in this posting were taken in the gloom of the 'tunnel' with the aid of the camera's built-in flash. These have a more Revoluntionary feel to them .... though nothing like the political grafitti I shot along First Avenue twenty years ago.

Ah, yes! Intelligent Design. I'm sure that's what God had in mind when he constructed us such that we are incapable of outrunning any meat-eater that might take a gastronomic fancy to us. 'He' designed us with zero survival features for those occasions when we are plunged into cool water, twenty miles from land. But I digress needlessly .... I am relatively happy with the Design ... and have never been hunted by a carnivore, OR gotten that far out onto the water and fallen in.

When Bookworm and I lived in Manette (East Bremerton), I once painted our bathroom walls with 'replicas' of Picasso figures. 'Mom' and 'noapologies' may remember that great endeavor(?).

This thirty foot wall section of Post Alley is one of my favorite spots to take photographs. It provides a continually shifting panorama of posterwork, both new and weathered.

I should probably 'shoot' this wall once every six months just to see how rapidly it changes. This is the east-west part where the Alley dives into the ground from the Public market. As it makes the sharp left turn south the posted material has a distinct shift towards a more 'political' vein. I'll see if I can get some of those up tomorrow.

Dateline Bremerton, Washington -- Affiliated Press --
Around 10:00 this morning, on a quiet deadend street in the outer fringes of East Bremerton, an (evil) alligator slithered out of the underbrush.....

.....forced his way into the home of therapy noir VIP Dr. Bookworm.....

....let forth a bellow of hunger and rage (partially due to being temporarily blinded by camera flashbulbs, or the equivalent thereto......

.....and launched a scurrilous attack on the person of the good doctor herself. Shriek, shriek! Help, help!

Grandson Allie rushed to Bookworm's aid, dealing the errant dragon a blow to the head with a four-pound ball of PlayDough. The upended gator was then atomically disassociated with a beam of super force emanating from the lad's fingertips. When asked how they felt about that, Bookworm and her grandson said, in unison, "We should have chocolate ... or presents."

Quote of the week:

"Autumn is my Hottie! Mine! Mine! Mine! She is MY Hottie!"

....Allie voicing his outrage when another little boy on the school bus claimed that Autumn (Allie's love of this academic year) was his Hottie.

I was in Seattle Saturday for an hour and fifty minutes, walked from the ferry terminal, up First Ave. to the market, wandered thru the Market Festival that was going on and returned to the ferry via the waterfront. Took 107 photographs. Trashed about thirty of them while editing at home. This is (in my opinion) the best shot I took that day, the one I'd enter in a juried contest with some pride. However, I love the grafitti and weathered posters mucho much.

A very small adventure in photo-journalism: The Sophisticated Ladies of Seattle displaying ....

.... self assurance ....

.... and flamboyance!

- THE END -

Whoever painted these 'creatures' on the steel walls of the Ferry Terminal to 1st Ave pedestrian overpass, really ought to be illustrating children's books. And I'm dreadfully sore of bone and muscle after yesterday's Seattle Walkabout ... I really need to do that every day until it doesn't hurt anymore. I keep thinking 'How can this be? Is this the same body that tramped the Drumheller Scablands for six hours a day, day after day, and never experienced a twinge?' But when I look at the date stamps on the back of the photos I was taking then, I see that it was - - - TWENTY YEARS AGO! [To be fair to my body, I quit doing that sort of thing only twelve years ago ... I shoulda kept at it.]

Did I mention in the last posting that I had troubles yesterday with seeing the pictures in the viewfinder and in the display thingamabob? It must have a name(?). Oh, yah ... 'LCD Monitor'. Well, the LCD Monitor was next to useless in the daylight lighting. And the viewfinder was not much better. Seemed 'dark' and fuzzy. I was stewing about it a lot more than I let on earlier. So late last night I decided to break out the 'Camera User Guide' and see why Canon thought this dreadful viewfinder was worth building into the camera.

And there, on page 28, I find the following words: "If the surroundings are too bright (for example, when you are shooting outdoors) and the images on the LCD Monitor are not clear, use the viewfinder for shooting. [UH-OH!] Adjust the viewfinder focus (p. 27) with the diopter adjustment dial (p. 14) so the displayed information appears clearly."

So I get meself over to page 14 (a diagram of the camera's features), locate the diopter adjustment dial, and finally spot it on the camera itself .... a tiny little clickable dial on the left side of the viewfinder housing, almost invisible and built for itsy-bitsy fairy fingers. I did manage to operate the dial and I did clear up the image in the viewfinder and I was subject to much relief and did not experience nightmares about vicious camera shaped ghouls last night.

And, of course, I had to pause in Post Alley and shoot a couple dozen photos of the posters plastered up there.

Took the new camera over to Seattle this morning and put it through its paces on a walk from the ferry terminal up First Ave. to the market and then back along the waterfront......

My one big problem with the camera is that I can not hardly see the display screen when I'm out-of-doors. But I sucked it up and made some good shots anyway.......

Also used the occasion as an excuse to break my diet ... to the tune of a double Whopper with cheese and a chocolate milk shake.......

The Whopper tasted like cardboard, but (MAN!) that milk shake was good!

More and more, I'm becoming very pleased with this new camera (Canon PowerShot S2 IS). At a trifle before 6:00 AM this morning, I was making coffee near the kitchen window and when I hit the button to grind the beans, the grinder roared and a sudden movement in the backyard caught my eye. A raccoon had been about to trot across the yard, but had retreated a few feet in the face of the coffee grinder noise. I seized my camera and slid open the glass door to the backyard and grabbed three good shots (and two bad ones) before he totally vanished in the brush. I had fairly low light at that time in the morning and the camera's built-in flash insisted on participating in the photo taking. The one posted above was shot from thirty feet away with the zoom cranked full out (about 10X) .... and 'enhanced' by an automatic function in my PhotoSuite Program ... which managed to brighten it without fading out the colors.

I can't figure out what's going on with the "La Fermata" pic I tried to post with the last blog entry. The site will not accept it. A mystery. I went back to the original .jpg file and made a second version and it won't accept that one either. A deepening mystery. Perhaps a 'sinful' picture ... but I can't spot the 'sin' .... maybe the exact color balance of a $50 bill(?).

But it did accept this .jpg image of one of Allie's major Masterpieces of last week. Kay had him draw a picture of Grandpa. He said, "But you know I can only draw heads!" So he drew my head and then went upstairs to watch cartoons on the bedroom TV. In a few minutes he came back down and added my 'body'. Back upstairs. Fifteen minutes later back down to add himself by my side. We being sidekicks and all.