rDay Two-Hundred-One

20151012-DSCN0672-Edit-EditAs her final act (performance?) before departing for Seattle (via Portland for a few days and perhaps Corvallis), Ivi proposes that we engage Charlie in an early morning walk. We make a variation on the customary jaunt to Gekeler and past Birnie Park, through the Forest Service/EOU boundary fields, across to Lower Hillcrest and on to main Hillcrest, then return through the EOU campus early enough before the impact of classes and student traffic.

After eating a sumptuous breakfast upon our return, we assemble Ivi’s luggage, (including her shark ukelele) and await the arrival of biologist and former classmate John for the drive to Portland. By mid-morning they are off, and the house takes on a quietude not experienced for some time.

Photogrammar

Photogrammar is a Yale online project site for organizing, searching, and visualizing the 170,000 photographs from 1935 to 1945 created by the United States Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information (FSA-OWI).  I quickly discovered about 100 photographs of Monona County, Iowa — where I spent most of my childhood — on the site, made by later-renowned photographers Russell Lee (famously documented Japanese-American internment during WWII) and John Vachon (noted for his photos of Marilyn Monroe, among others).  The Monona County photographs are dated about one year prior to my birth.  Here are a few examples.

I also came upon hundreds and hundreds of FSA photographs from eastern Oregon made by legendary photographer Dorothea Lange, like this:
dorothea_lange_8b35081v

Thanks to photographer friend, John, for alerting me to Photogrammar.

Point Vicente, 1975

Point Vicente is on some of the most rugged and interesting of Los Angeles-area beaches, between the “tourist” beach cities of Manhattan, Hermosa and Redondo and Los Angeles Harbor/Long Beach.  Its lighthouse stood on the tip of the Palos Verdes peninsula overlooking the seafront where these photographs were made in March of 1975.  This is a place where metal blends into rock.

Ongoing Demise of the Los Angeles Times

As a 30-year veteran of Los Angeles living, I came to be a regular and loyal reader of the Times (and did some consulting work for a few weeks at its Times-Mirror parent).  Today, brother Dennis (not only a Los Angeles resident, but a newspaper reporter in his immediate post-college days) sends me an email with the subject line that I have quoted in this post’s title), along with this content:

“​Oct. 5 issue, presented without comment.”
L.A. Times

rDay One-Hundred-Ninety-Five

Today, driving around town on errands and shopping …

* Why an interest in Airstream?  Probably because this was similar to one I had in mind in the mid-70s — the idea was to equip it as a mobile photographic lab and operations base, towed by my killer ’65 Ford truck (which co-existed with the Land Rover for a time and also figured in the Venice years).  Here’s a 1977 portrait of The Truck, a sleeper hot rod.
1977 Misc-0009-Edit-Edit