The guy wearing the hoody riding the bike on the sidewalk (on the sidewalk!) mars this oldish picture. Or maybe he doesn’t, maybe he adds to what’s a flawed and ugly (I’ll admit it’s ugly, but I took it, so I’m allowed) photo of what you see a lot of when you walk across town, and it’s winter, and it’s cold, and winter’s long, and you’re waiting at an intersection to cross the street, and it’s cold. (Did I mention the length of the winter yet?)

The camera is a Minolta SLR. I think XD-11, but it might be an X-370. Definitely Minolta because we don’t own any other film cameras. The film: Grain looks like Ilford’s C41 film, which I’ve actually had a lot of trouble with: 24 exposures packed into 36 exposure canister, the film wound so tightly in the canister if fucked up the film crank on the X-370. But I like the fat grain of this film a lot.

Anyway, enjoy it. Failures like this picture are often thoughtful and good to learn from.

Jim here.

I don’t like flying. I tell people that when we travel Beth does all the planning (she does) and I just show up at the airport (I do) and in 2-10 hours we end up someplace faraway, or even farther.

Beth explained to me that in the early afternoon the flights from overseas begin passing over our heads here in Portland, Maine, on their way to Logan, La Guardia, JFK and points south. I’ve been fortunate, thanks to Beth, to be on some of those flights.

I know contrails represent massive amounts of fossil fuels burned, and that that carbon is bad, but I do get sentimental and that itch to travel gets itchier when the sky is clear and it’s early afternoon and the flights from overseas are starting to pass overhead.

For reasons I can’t explain in detail right now I’m looking forward to our starting to travel again as a family next year.

Soundtrack:

Wanderlust, by Paul McCartney, from Tug Of War
Far, Far Away, by Wilco, from Being There

Cloud Gate sculpture at Millennium Park

Evergreen Cemetery was modeled on another Victorian-style cemetery, Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which itself was modeled on the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

Friends of Evergreen Cemetery’s web site is here:

http://www.friendsofevergreen.org/