In London!

Hi all,
I'm in London playing tourist and am one happy camper. Alas, my laptop is still balking at my spending any time on the internet so no photos today or perhaps for the duration of the trip. I'm on a borrowed computer now.
I have already taken a zillion photos so much posting to follow when I'm on-line or home again.
Best,
S

The Best and the Rest

I thought I'd share with you my first (actually second since my first roll I've hand developed the negatives but haven't made prints yet) role of print film in ages. I bought some cheap color film and had it all cheaply developed (one hour photo at Walgreen's). The shots are pretty bad! The colors look off, most are under or over exposed or dreadfully blurry. I'm almost proud of how awful I am.



For my class we are using black and white film and doing our own developing so it will take me longer to get feedback on the quality but hopefully I will be learning a lot.
In the interest of full disclosure, I will also show you my worst shot. It's OK to laugh.

Busy, busy

Sorry for not posting for so long. Every time I seem to sit down to do so, something comes up. My computer is moribund as well. I'm not sure I'll be able to resurrect it.
In my not so infinite free time I'm taking an analog photography class. I find it hard to think of the camera as an analog camera. Whatever happened to "film" camera? Today I developed my first batch of negatives. Some of them even came out. I won't get to print the film (yes we're doing dark room too), until next week.
The photo is of my, borrowed, camera. I may splurge on a used Canon SLR--they are priced well and are compatible with some of my Canon lenses. My aim in taking this class (besides being entertained and that the class time fit with my schedule) is to get more comfortable with the manual settings on my DSLR. Hope it works.

Just a taste. . . .

How was your holiday weekend--that is if you are reading in the U.S? Mine was so busy I hardly got a chance to check my e-mail much less blog. I'm here to post at least one photo from the holiday.
On Friday the family, a couple of friends and I picnicked in Grant Park to listen to a concert and watch the fireworks (Chicago's traditional celebration is on July 3rd). The crowds were daunting--I ran over to the Taste of Chicago, a local food fest to pick up some dinner for myself and the boys and felt somewhat like it must feel to be dancing in a Mosh Pit (is that spelled correctly). Not my thing! Intimate relations with thousands of strangers is creepy at best. I had vivid images of how a person could get crushed if they fell in a crowd like that.
Nonetheless, the picnic was fun, the company exceptional, the concert a bit lame and the fireworks fun as always. And it only took us 45 minutes to get out of the parking lot on the way home. When you attend an event with hundreds of thousands of people, expect traffic! I'll look up the actual head count later. There was also an amazing police presence, but that's for another post.
I'm late to work! Will post now and add picture later.

Memories. . . .

Sunday, I went to an antiques fair. It was an outdoor event probably modeled after the European equivalent. It was the perfect day for a stroll although I arrived at the fair just as the vendors were packing up. This meant I didn't have to pay for admission and I didn't have time to spend very much money. Both good things, in my books.
Speaking of books, I found an old baby book which I bought because the family in the book lived practically down the block from me. I thought it would be fun to go over to the address listed in the book and see if things had changed much. After taking a lot of Chicago photos, I became interested in the architectural history of what I saw and started a small collection of postcards in the hopes of taking "before and after" shots. Alas, my first few attempts were doomed as the areas in question had changed so as to be unrecognizable. I still plan on getting back to it. So this little baby book also had a photo of a recognizable building and now I get to check and see if the apartment building still exists.



There is a bit of voyeurism to reading someone else's personal records. I wonder what happened to the family and why they lost track of their book. Did the whole family die off or did no one particularly care about their family history? I guess there is no way to tell. I am enjoying owning a tiny bit of Chicago history.



There was a second baby book with the one I wound up buying. It was in much better shape and a lot more money so I didn't buy it. It might have been from the same family so I feel a little bad separating them but the book lacked the Chicago interest being about a New York family that only moved to Chicago as an afterword in the last few pages. And I did need to attend to my budget. I also had more trouble treating the album as a collectible after reading one of the pages. It looked like a fairly innocuous page in the baby record. A couple of milestones, one illness, then two entries at 4 years old. The first reported the child had Scarlet Fever. The next entry 4 days later noted her death. The entry felt dispassionate. It could have been a calendar notation of a doctor's appointment. That made it all the more shocking in a way.
It is so easy to forget as we all get in a tizzy over the Swine Flu that we are so relatively protected from infectious diseases. I had Scarlet Fever as a child. I vaguely remember having a rash and a fever. A few days of penicillin and case closed. It is hard to bear in mind that in early 20th century America and in some parts of the world today, infant and child mortality is routine and not exceptional.
I see too much grief in the here and now as part of my work. I couldn't own that baby album and be forever reminded of that mother's loss. I'll stick to the album of happy little smiling baby faces and the illusion of immortality through photography.

S. to the Rescue?

Is this some kind of animal rescue week? On Saturday I went for a walk and discovered a feral kitten. I spent some time trying to catch it feeling concerned that it was on its own and likely to die. The little thing was vicious. It hissed and spit at me and ultimately took off so fast I couldn't catch it. I think this was likely a good thing. I would have been clawed half to death trying to get the wee beastie home, probably one of the onlookers would have accused me of animal abuse, and once I got it home I would have exposed my cats to whatever diseases it was carrying. Not to mention the family's heart strings being plucked. I could just hear the begging. Please, please, please can we keep it? Then the trip to the vet and/or shelter, etc. So mercifully for me if not for the cat, it got away.
Then yesterday I was tempted to rescue a few baby turtles. For this I need to give you a bit of a backstory. When I adopted Dandelion, the box turtle, I joined two turtle listservs on Yahoo. They have been quite the education about turtle life style and diet as well as some funny stories about life with some of the larger tortoises.
I've also heard from people who are passionate about turtles and whose lives turn around them. Some are biologists, some vets and others are involved in turtle rescue projects. They rescue turtles from bad homes and from habitat loss in the wild. Some are found injured on roads or in back yards and rehabilitated.
From them, I've learned that some turtles and tortoises are in over supply and some are endangered. And that these are high maintenance pets. Dandelion will never weigh much more than a pound but may outlive me. She needs a varied diet with calcium and vitamin supplements yet is a picky eater. I have to watch for beak overgrowth, various infections, shell pyramiding and other woes. If well treated she may outlive me. I'm only glad my son didn't convince me to adopt a cute little tortoise. It sounds like having a cow live in your basement from the stories I've heard.
Anyway, I also learned that the turtle-for-pet trade is quite regulated. So when I saw three wee little turtles in plastic carrying cases in a Chinatown gift shop yesterday, I knew that their sale is probably not legal. I knew that the babies were likely doomed to an early death due to neglect or uninformed care. I also knew that when grown those babies would require the equivalent of a small pond to be well maintained. I restrained myself and did not buy the babies, lecture the owners, or turn them in to the authorities.
Then I wandered on still feeling vaguely guilty. I next went in to a Chinese grocery and picked up some long string beans and some baby bok choy. I roamed through the seafood part of the store where you can see tanks of live fish, crab and molluscs. And there right in front was a tank full of live turtles. There were smallish turtles that I'm guessing are sliders, and some very large (and fairly ugly) turtles that I could not identify. Now that I have a pet turtle, eating turtle makes me a little squeamish. Like most omnivorous Americans, I don't like seeing where my meat comes from. Not that eating turtle is less humane than eating cow or chicken. I know hypocrisy when I see it.
It also made me think. Should a no-doubt innocent Chinese shop keeper get in trouble for selling babies of an animal that is widely regarded as food? In retrospect, if I had said something about the unkindness of keeping baby turtles, I would have made a royal ass out of myself.
Moral of the story? No doubt Aesop or La Fontaine would have said it better but here's my take:
One man's cat is another man's dinner.
Take that!

Dandelion

Dandelion my pet three-toed box turtle agreed to pose for this portrait after her bath. Note that she is still really dirty and this is after a 10 minute soak. It has been hot here lately and she has spent most of her time outside buried in mud. Being a turtle isn't exactly a high stim situation.