Book Club at Carrie's

This past Sunday our book club met at Carrie T.'s house to discuss Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. It was our first time at Carrie's. She has a lovely home in South Minneapolis, two gentle, friendly dogs and an exquisite patio where we lounged away the afternoon, eating, sipping and talking smart. Unbelievably, I didn't get a photo of her!


It was so good to see Molly. The last time I saw her was the the week before when she had her gallbladder surgery. She looked a lot peppier, and said she felt pretty much normal, still just a little achy.


It felt like one of those precious, last-of-summer days.

Flannel Nightgown Redux

There was such an overwhelming response to Heather in her flannel nightgown on Christmas Eve, 1972, here she is again, just moments before that photo was taken. In fact, I'm guessing that the box she's holding contains that very garment. I love her shoes, or shoe rather, not sure where the right one went. She's about to guess what's in the box. Nightgown, Heather! Nightgown!

Sudek

On of my very favorite photographers is the Czech artist Josef Sudek. I'm not quite sure how or when I was introduced to his work, but I must have become aware of him in the late 80's. I suspect it was through Aperture magazine. There is a paltry entry on him in Wikipedia and a nice, if modest, collection of his photos here.



Sudek lost an arm in World War I, but despite this, used a large format camera to work with.











He's most well known for his panoramic images of Prague, but I'm particularly drawn to the photos he made in his tiny studio, often on the window ledge.

The Minneapolis Institute of Arts has a small number of Sudek prints, including this lovely photograph.




Who can say why particular works or a certain artist moves one so? I know I can't. I just know that in the days when I was printing in the darkroom the combination of Sudek's photos and Dvorák's music was a powerful inspiration.

August is Up

As Heather recently reminded me, "August, die she must."

Flannel Nightgown

Here's another treasure from the slides archive. Heather, on what I'm guessing is Christmas Eve, 1972. It looks like we've just finished opening the presents from 'out of town' relatives, which was our tradition back then. The family and Santa gifts would be opened the next morning.

Other Christmas Eve traditions included Oyster Stew for dinner (if you were a kid, you could have frozen waffles, but only up to a certain age, when you then joined the ranks of the Oyster Eaters), and listening to an old, scratchy LP of A Christmas Carol, with Sir Ralph Richardson as Scrooge. We all had our favorite lines from that record; mine was always Scrooge's quip to Marley's ghost: "There's more of gravy than of grave about you."

Heather sure looks happy!