Happy New Year!!

Oh crap! I realized I haven't been here in over a year. It looks like all the photos I've posted are gone now. I'll have to find out why the links are dead now since I still have the same IP.

The Joy of Internet

About a month ago I finally got a high speed internet connection. I’ve been using the internet since 1997, but have always had a slow connection because our location is too remote to have the option of cable or DSL. My normal IP for dial-up began offering wireless, but the technician that came out said we would have to clear some small trees and tall brush to clear the view to a nearby butte and get signal. That took a couple of weeks, but now all hooked up, my connection speed went from 16kb/s to over 1Mb/s. This is the way it’s supposed to be.

The Hootenanny Shack

On the way to Waldport from Philomath on Highway 34 there's this little red house that has HOOTENANNY in big white letters on the roof. It looks like it might have been built in the 1930's or 40's. The yard is well kept, but now there's a tall cyclone fence surrounding the place to keep people out.

I've always wondered about this place, and why someone would paint that on their roof. I wonder if it was a place that loggers used to go to dance and get plastered in the old days. It's right on the highway, and the Alsea River is on the other side of the road. We always say, "There's the Hootenanny Shack" when we drive by on the way to the coast.

8/19/2012
Thanks so much to Anonymous for all the background info on the Hootenanny place. I hope you get time to enjoy it often. It's in an ideal locale.

I'm Back

Well, it’s been about a year since my last post. I had lost the information on even where to find the website to this blog. But lo and behold I found it and here I am. I'm presently suffering the slings and arrows of outrageously slow dial-up connection speed at 14.4Kbps. Living in a rural area (phone lines from the 1950’s, no cable). I called up Qwest to ask them if there were any alternatives to the abysmal bandwidth here. Their tech guy was quite rude and said we have a voice connection, and it’s working, period, no other choice. This pissed me off enough to look around at any other possibilities. The only other option there is out here is satellite internet. Right now the installation fee is free, but the equipment cost is a few hundred bucks. It’s an expensive threshold to overcome but promises blinding fast downloads and uploads. As it is, I have to use a crowbar to pry my two kids off the machine to get access to it, to great gnashing of teeth.

Introducing the 2-Foot Zipper Gallery

After watching a variety of films, my children have discovered the interesting phenomenon of the “two-foot zipper”. On their request, I’ve begun a collection of vid-caps that are good examples of those portly individuals that have found a source of trousers to accommodate their abdominal expanse, the commonality of which is the two-foot zipper.

The first example is from a Twilight Zone episode from 1961 called "Dust". Please imagine a Rod Serling voice over here:
"The setting: a dirty 1800's western town of no distinction. And our subject: an equally dirty and indistinct character that is cynically trying to make a buck off of a condemned man. Submitted for your approval."


Another Twilight Zone selection featuring Andy Devine displaying his two-foot zippered ponch, with some intergalactic tryouts for the Dick Cavett Show. Cue the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

Our third example comes from the 1963 film “The Haunting”, an exceptional adaptation of the ghost story by Shirley Jackson. This fellow is the parking lot attendant in Eleanor Lance’s apartment house, who hesitantly hands over the keys to the Volkswagen she shares with her nasty sister.

The next picture is from the recent movie “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”, showing Charles Durning and his on-screen son enjoying a mint julep and planning political intrigue on the porch of their Southern estate.

More to come......

Happy New Year

Number-one daughter was down from Seattle with her boyfriend for a visit on the New Years holiday.

It was good to see her again. I was introduced into her life just before she turned 7. Her mother and I got married that year, and things changed for her. Things changed for me too. Instant family. Unemployed. Time to grow up, fast. There is a wall between us that grew to it’s thickest when she was about 18. It seems like it has slowly thinned over the last seven years. I hope that process will continue.

It finally stopped raining for a short while. I got a Nikon D50 camera for Christmas and spent some time walking and taking pictures with my wife and daughter on the road going up to the nearby rain swollen creek. I had been salivating over this camera ever since seeing some pictures taken with one.

I used to take pictures in 35mm, and had a darkroom in my basement in high school. I used an old Argus C-3 my Dad gave me. Most of the equipment I used I inherited from my long dead uncle Joel including developing tanks, a bulk film loader, the B&W enlarger, developing pans, safelight, etc. Uncle Joel was a studio musician that worked for CBS and lived with his family down in North Hollywood, CA. He died back in the 60’s of cancer. After my Aunt (his wife) developed brain cancer and was dying, their children came up to Oregon to live with us. My aunt miraculously recovered and moved up here also. My dad got the old dusty darkroom gear, and it sat in the basement until I took a geeky AV class in high school and learned how to develop and print pictures.

Beginnings

Well, here goes nothing. This is my first posting on this blog. I thought it should begin with the New Year of 2006. I will be posting a title picture of Charybdis based on a screen capture from the movie "The Odyssey" sometime soon. You might wonder why I named this blog after a mythical sea monster. I do too. No good reason except that I've always liked myths and legends.
I've heard people say "two-thousand six", and "twenty-oh-six". I wonder if there is a proper way of stating the year? I've thought about this since the turnover of the millenia, but haven't resolved it, other than most people seem to say the former.