The rain California has been experiencing, at least here in Southern California, was pretty much over this past Tuesday, the 17th. However, we got a little surprise on Thursday, the 19th, and this was the result. A Facebook friend posted that evening he wasn’t able to get a photo of the rainbow and within hours there were upwards of two dozen photos—some of them pretty spectacular—posted as comments to his OP. All hail the ubiquity of the cell phone camera. BTW – I took these two photos from our front yard.
According to a post in Facebook this photo was taken of the L.A. skyline the morning after the Christmas storm of this year, 2021. It’s been a while since the city of my birth has shown itself off like this.
If you look closely at the bottom right corner of the photo you can see a stepped, pointy building barely peeking out above one of the smallest buildings making up that skyline.
I was ushered into existence on this planet somewhere in the middle of that group of buildings. California Hospital at 12th & Hope. At the time that building you can just barely see (it’s City Hall) was the tallest building in downtown Los Angeles.
As a young boy growing up in the fifties I was always envious of New York and Chicago’s skyscrapers. Now we’ve got ’em and I’m not sure it’s a good thing.
I was going through some photos the other day and came across a couple I wanted to share with my friends on Facebook. I still post quite a bit there and I get a fair amount of feedback, but the one of my girls and me at a Wedding Vows renewal ceremony got 125 likes and a lot of favorable comments, so I decided to share it on Twitter. I don’t have nearly as many “followers” as I have “friends,” mostly because I was a bad boy last year and, after 14 years, Twitter suspended my account. I believe it was because, in an answer to someone else’s tweet, I suggested the former guy might benefit from a heart attack. Oh, well!
Since these are two of my favorite pics of my girls and, since they’re about ten years old, I figured I would memorialize them here. After all, this is probably the most accurate historical record I’m going to leave and these girls are such a huge, profound portion of my life, it’s probably where they belong. So … in addition to continuing to share my Photoshop efforts on occasion, I’m going to put up more pictures of the girls … especially now that they’re both approaching adulthood.
The photo on the right received a nice welcome as well, though not quite like the “dressier” photo. It was taken after we’d eaten dinner at Toluca Lake Bob’s Big Boy. We had finished a long day of entertainment at Griffith Park, including a miniature train ride, horseback riding, a stopover at the Observatory, and a stop at Travel Town on our way out. I really miss these girls. They’re teenagers now (my oldest, Aimee, will be 20 in three months) and you can probably figure out what that means. <Sigh!>
This post reflects two basic “discoveries” I’ve made within the past couple of years. The first is the magnification my iPhone is capable of providing through its camera. I have been able to take some fairly spectacular pics of various items seen extremely close up and in sharp focus. I find the pictures I can take with it are (or can be) interesting and, at times, beautiful and ornate.
The second thing I discovered is that, although I come from a family whose elderly members weren’t very wrinkly as they aged, I recently began noticing I was developing “chicken skin” on parts of my body, most notably my arms. At nearly 74, I expect I can accurately be described as elderly, so I was a bit taken aback at first. I don’t recall exactly how I took the first magnified photo of the inside of my elbow or my forearm closely adjacent to it, but I found the contours and texture of my aging skin to be quite fascinating, if not at times somewhat freaky.
Here are four pictures—extreme closeups—of either the inside of my elbow or of my forearm just below it. I find the patterns both pleasing to look at and a bit mind-blowing to think of how evolution has developed this envelope for us to live in and be protected by. Its construction and flexibility are truly a wonder, especially when viewed up real close. We humans will no doubt one day be able to replicate human skin (we’re already getting there) and it’s fascinating to me to contemplate how we, in a matter of decades (centuries at the most, depending on how you define progress and accumulated knowledge) we’re creating analogues to naturally occurring physical elements that took millions of years to evolve. Don’t know about all y’all, but I’m fairly gobsmacked by the whole thing.
In the Spring of 2018, my wife’s niece arranged for a few members of the family to take some portrait photos. She chose the studio of Toyo Miyatake, a photographer who was imprisoned in the Manzanar concentration camp, during World War II. My wife is Sansei (3rd generation Japanese-American) and grew up on Monterey Park, CA, where most of her family continues to reside. The studio is currently being run by his son, Archie, who took some wonderful pictures of my wife, our daughters, and her mother, sister, and niece.
Caption on photo reads “War Relocation Center – Manzanar, California”
The studio is in San Gabriel and it’s filled with lots of photos taken by Toyo and Archie and I snapped some pics with my phone to share. I didn’t get around to doing anything until now, for reasons I’m incapable of reciting. Nevertheless, here they are. In looking for information on Toyo and Manzanar, I came across the Densho Encyclopedia, which has this to say about their work:
The Densho Encyclopedia is a free and publicly accessible website that provides concise, accurate, and balanced information on many aspects of the Japanese American story during World War II. It is designed and written for a non-specialist audience that includes high school and college students and instructors, multiple generations of Nikkei community members, confinement sites preservation groups, amateur and professional historians, librarians, journalists, documentarians, and the general public.
The Encyclopedia is thoroughly cross indexed and articles are linked to relevant primary and secondary materials from the Densho archive and from other websites that include still and moving images, documents, databases, and oral history interview excerpts as well as standard bibliographical sources.
The history of America’s treatment of Japanese-American citizens during WWII is a stain on everything this country is “supposed” to stand for, yet rarely seems to be able to provide. It was the result of racism and chauvinism, of nationalism and white supremacy. It set the Japanese-American community back years, if not decades, especially for those families whose property was stolen by white citizens who remained behind. Some were able to reclaim their homes and farms, but many didn’t. Toyo Miyatake was imprisoned here in California, at Manzanar. Here is what the Densho Encyclopedia has to say about his time there.
The exclusion order forced Miyatake, his wife and four children, to the concentration camp at Manzanar. He was able to store his photographic equipment but managed to smuggle a camera lens and film plate holder into the camp against government orders. Miyatake told his son Archie that he felt it was his duty to document camp life. An Issei carpenter in camp constructed a box to house the lens, and Miyatake was able to get film into camp by way of a hardware salesman and former client. The photographer eventually asked camp director Ralph Merritt if he could set up a photo studio, and Merritt, who learned about Miyatake from Edward Weston, consented with the provision that Miyatake only load and set the camera, and a Caucasian assistant snap the shutter. Eventually, that restriction was lifted, and Miyatake was designated official camp photographer, and granted the freedom to take photos of everyday life at Manzanar. While there, Miyatake met and began a longtime collaboration with Ansel Adams, who wanted to capture candid photos of people there; the two men later published their work together in the book Two Views of Manzanar. Miyatake’s groundbreaking Manzanar photographs have also been featured in a 2012 exhibition at the Eastern California Museum called “Personal Responsibility: The Camp Photos of Toyo Miyatake.”
The collage I’m sharing, below, is of Archie recreating one of his father’s more iconic photos. He was able to find the now grown men who were originally pictured in Manzanar and bring them to the site for the shoot. I think the photos are pretty self explanatory, but the second row has the money shots, IMO.
Manzanar then and now!
I’ll share three more photos I took while we were there. The photo on the left is of a portion of the front of the studio, where much of Archie’s work is displayed. It was there I saw large photos of people like Condoleezza Rice and Vin Scully, in addition to many others. The center photo is of Archie shooting photos of my family, which consisted of my wife, my MIL and SIL, along with My SIL’s daughter (our niece), her grand daughter by her other daughter (deceased) and our two daughters. The photo on the right is a collage of photos Archie took at the wedding of “Uncle” George Takei and Brad Altman. Click on any of the pics to see a larger version.
Aaaand . . . since I’ve mentioned George and Brad, I have one more photo to share, below these three. On September 19, 2019, Linda and I attended a talk at The Ricardo Montalbán Theatre, in Hollywood, where George was discussing his newest book, “They Called Us Enemy.” We purchased a copy and, while waiting in line to get it autographed, Brad walked through the line greeting everybody. We got a nice photo with him. Here’s how George’s book has been described:
George Takei has captured hearts and minds worldwide with his captivating stage presence and outspoken commitment to equal rights. But long before he braved new frontiers in Star Trek, he woke up as a four-year-old boy to find his own birth country at war with his father’s-and their entire family forced from their home into an uncertain future. In a stunning graphic memoir, Takei revisits his haunting childhood in American concentration camps, as one of over 100,000 Japanese Americans imprisoned by the U.S. government during World War II. Experience the forces that shaped an American icon-and America itself-in this gripping tale of courage, country, loyalty, and love.
Yesterday I had to take my youngest daughter to the orthodontist to get her braces checked. She’s almost done with what is looking like a two-year ordeal to straighten her teeth. After she was done, we stopped by a local pet and feed store and picked up a bag of duck food, which they sell for $1.00/lb. We then went to Rancho Simi Community Park, which has a fairly large pond and is always filled with lots of ducks, geese, coots, and various other species of birds.
I took a bunch of photos as she was feeding them and they were milling around waiting or congregating to snatch up the tiny pellets of food she was throwing to them. I’m not conversant in all the different types of ducks there are, but I recognize Canadian honkers when I see them and I’ve researched the other species of goose that seem to live there year round. The first picture here is of Chinese geese. The only thing I can say for sure about them is . . . they’re assholes; at least the males are. They’re very aggressive. A couple of months ago I had to lightly kick one of them to keep it from attacking me.
The second photo is of a duck that has a pompadour. Not sure why that happens, but I’ve seen this duck at the pond before. Another reason I’m pretty sure all these waterfowl reside here year-round. The third pic is, I believe, a Mallard Drake. The fourth is a nice closeup of a Canadian goose who was unconcerned enough to come right up to me. Fifth is another Canadian, maybe the same one in the fourth. Sixth is also a Canadian and I can’t quite figure out what it was doing; whether it was begging for food or trying to intimidate me. No other goose has exhibited this particular behavior.
The seventh photo is of my daughter feeding them and gives you an idea of the various species that live there. Thankfully, the Chinese geese didn’t come by and ruin it all. The eighth photo is of a bunch of birds eating right in front of the bench I was sitting on, and the ninth is mostly coots and a few Mallards in the water. My daughter loves feeding the ducks at this park and we’ll be going there again soon.
Here are a few more photos I took around the house. Just looking for interesting patterns, especially when zoomed in real close. I’m also experimenting a bit with WordPress’s various blocks for presenting photos. Here I’m using the slideshow block.
In my last couple of years in High School I took a lot of photography classes. Back then (this was in 1964 – 1966) there was no such thing as digital photos. Everything was film and darkroom work. I remember enjoying taking pictures at football games, using Kodak Tri-X 400 black & white negative film.
I had to take it into the darkroom and develop both the film and then use the negatives obtained from the film strip to project onto photographic paper, which we then developed ourselves in the darkroom. It involved a lot of banging around in the dark, getting used to working by dim red light, and lots of chemicals to develop, set, and finish the work.
I’ve long enjoyed photography and still enjoy using tools like Photoshop to tweak and improve photos; sometimes to create political memes from them as well. I recently started using the magnification app that came with my iPhone XR and I’ve realized I can produce some interesting photos by zooming way in on subjects that have intricate or visually remarkable patterns.
Several of the ones I’m publishing here should be fairly easily recognizable to most people. At least one of them requires a bit of engineering knowledge and, perhaps, familiarity with space hardware. A couple of them should be easy to discern. Two of them relate to cooking in one way or another. What do you see?
Systems Savvy 