The Pumpkin and Los Angeles Smog, Forty-Eight Years Ago

When my friend Kevin, an avid Porsche enthusiast and European car collector, saw a recently-rediscovered but previously-rejected Kodachrome slide from 1969 of my 1966 Porsche 911, he offered his Photoshop services (he’s a filmmaker and media arts professor at the local university) in an attempt to rescue the image from its grossly faded and discolored and seemingly irredeemable condition. So here is one work-in-progress version of the thing, showing the car (aka “The Pumpkin”) atop Mt. Washington, east of downtown Los Angeles, with the overview of the city and basin below obscured by the dense smog. Probably shot with either my 1960s Nikon F or an old Minolta.

kevin roy remix
kevin roy remix

And here’s a crossreference to an aside …

It’s A New Year

[rDay 648]

20170101-d61_0796The other day, BIL Jeff inquired about my hiking boots.  They, a pair of Danner TrailTreks (made in Portland), were recently acquired when I finally (semi-)retired my other hiking boots, a 15-year-old Columbia pair, and a 25-year-old Vasque pair.  Then, this morning, as I opened the Sunday Oregonian, I find an article on the recent death of Bill Danner and some history on his company.  For any who may be interested …

Ultimate Authoritative Unimpeachable Top 20 Books of 2016

booksSomething after my data-driven, computer nerd heart. The kind of project that I often think of doing, but never get around to it, even though I have the database and programming tools right at hand to do so.

Quartz has made a distillation of 36 “best” lists of books for 2016 and published it here. (Turns out that we have read or are reading a handful of list members and have found then to be listworthy in our humble opinions. No clunkers to report at this time.)