Continuing the documentation of Catherine Street, a customary route to/from work …
Along the way to/from the workplace …
Today, the temperature climbs again after two or three days of slight respite:
Probably just about everybody knows by now that Aretha Franklin — the “Queen of Soul” — passed away earlier today. While I posted some notes and links on my music blog a few hours ago, I find myself continuing to remember her music and my associated experiences (and listening continually throughout the day). One of my most vivid memories was while traveling, circa 1968, in a carload of fellow GAO employees and hearing the then-new release of “Think” and how I insisted that the conversation cease and that the radio volume be turned up and how that demand was met with eye-rolls by some of my colleagues and enthusiastic encouragement by others. And that has led me to recall the interplay of music and culture and Government service during that era (perhaps to be the subject of a future bit of posted reflection). But, in the meantime, here is “Think”:
One of my memories of my paternal grandfather, Del (you met him earlier here), was that he was fond of quoting Will Rogers (as well as Mark Twain). Here are some musings attributed to the man:
“Ten men in our country could buy the whole world and ten million can’t buy enough to eat.”
“You can’t say that civilization don’t advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.”
“If pro is the opposite of con, what is the opposite of Congress?”
“There are three kinds of men. The ones that learn by readin’. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.”
“An economist’s guess is liable to be as good as anybody else’s.”
“Try to live your life so that you wouldn’t be afraid to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.”
“If all politicians fished instead of spoke publicly, we would be at peace with the world.”
And…
“A fool and his money are soon elected”
Here’s what the last couple of days look like throughout the day. Winds appear to carry smoke northward from eastern Oregon wildfires.
And today’s walk to/from work:
I had expected to be doing this clawing and sorting through boxes of old negatives and slides and a lot of whatever during the upcoming winter. But unexpectedly losing the use of my main camera has led me to this alternative. And something of at least minor interest is coming up every day.
This morning I find negatives, previously thought to be lost forever, that further document an infamous road trip in 1977. Three photographers, Lee, Maureen and myself, left Venice, California in a Volkswagen bug, bound for the tiny almost-ghost-town of Bisbee, Arizona, to meet up with bartender/writer/philosopher Harold and join him and his girlfriend to press on into Mexico.
Lee was a photographer in the employ of the Los Angeles Times and had hatched this plan that we would combine our shooting results from the trip and present in a group show, and he would develop all the negs in the Times darkroom. While the show did in fact later materialize, some rolls of film were thought to have been lost, so their prints never were exhibited. But, somehow — I found at least some of the negatives buried in an unmarked box within a box within a box. Here is a sampling. (And if you want to learn more about the Bisbee/Naco road trip, I am adding some more of the new finds to my own existing record of the trip at HHR.)
More dredging-up from old, forgotten, never printed negatives, some almost beyond repair. My sister, sometime in the early 70s.
A companion piece to Saturday’s Los Angeles image …
Given a now-defunct camera, I return to exploration of old negatives. Here I find some trashed color negatives, but see if they can be resurrected by conversion to monochrome. (I note that VW bugs, ubiquitous in that era, appear in the background of at least two images. And I have been doing windshield photography for a long time.)
From some forgotten archives, circa 1969. First, a classic VW, location unknown, probably somewhere in Los Angeles or Long Beach. Then a view of Los Angeles from the hills, perhaps anticipating climate change:
