1976

I think that this must be our neighbor Tim B, since he's the only guy I know who had horses in the neighborhood. This slide was processed in December 1976, but I would guess that it's taken a few months earlier than that, based on lack of snow.

Below, a few shots of the house, also from 1976.

The kitchen. Note the slate painting on the wall. I can remember many spider plants like the one on the right from growing up. The natural light coming in is from the glass door that led to the back yard off of the kitchen, before the addition. I think the hutch is still in the house, but painted blue.

The living room.
My bedroom. My mother painted the Winnie the Pooh murals on the walls. Sadly, they no longer exist. I like the Winnie the Pooh doll leaning up against the Winnie the Pooh wall painting.

Digression: The Last Fifty Visitors

We've reached 50 visitors. I'm sure a lot of them are the same folks, but there are some oddities in the page visitor data.

For the curious, here's a map showing the locations of the last fifty visitors to the blog. I only sent the link to a few family members, so I'm not really sure how people are finding it and who's looking at it exactly.

It doesn't look like fifty because, I think, there are some clusters. Like for instance, Holyoke, South Hadley and Chicopee would be practically on top of each other from this view.

I find it interesting that the page has had visitors from Portugal, Croatia and Romania.

Hello! Thanks for visiting.

Dad at 22 and 23

Here's a few slides of Dad from the same batch as those of Mom yesterday.

This first slide is labelled "XMas 1970." It looks like Dad is eating a chocolate. In December 1970 he was 22.

Below: Dad reading on the couch, April 1971 and, below that, mowing the yard out behind the little house, by the creek, July 1971.

These two are after his birthday in 1971, so he would be 23 by the time of these slides.

Pay bills, make a cake

Here, in slides that were processed in April of 1970, my mother pays bills (and sticks them in envelopes and puts stamps on them), then bakes a cake.

At least, I'm guessing it's a cake. There's flour, baking soda and sugar. I guess it could be cookies too.

Things of note:

- Looks like they had a pet bird, as evidenced by the cage hanging on the wall to the left of the fridge.

- These slides were taken during the few years that my parents lived in the "little house," where my grandfather lives now, before they built the new house and within the first year of their marriage.

- I think the kitchen table may be the same table I currently have in my recording studio, with the p.a. and boxes of microphones stacked upon it. It looks identical.

Epcot Center

Wondering where the stuffed Figment came from? Why, Epcot Center of course!

In 1983 my parents and I, along with Uncle Rick and Aunt Mary, went to Disney World and Epcot Center. I remember Epcot being a gleaming beacon of the future.

Epcot at the time was an honest to goodness slice of the 70's image of what the future might be (even though it opened in 1982). Looking back at it from the perspective of 2008 it kind of seems very, well, kind of dated.

And who remembers Epcot having such a groovy vibe? (See the slide of the mosaic wall.)

Even the name is groovy. Did you know it's an acronymn for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow? I didn't.



Journey Into Imagination, where Figments are born.

More Jessica

Here's my mother with Jessica, all bundled up the cold weather of December 1983. Notice the ever-present Figment and the head of the stuffed drumming bear peeking up on the left.

This was taken in the basement living room. Like the paneling?

Below: two more of Jessica from the same day.

There's the edge of a lobster pot, which had a glass top to make a coffee table. The lobster pot is now living outside by the pool shed. Our big old console TV is in the background, where now a 50" plasma sits.

Cousins, 1983

The cousins pose for a photo. From left: Jeremy, Randi, Jessica, Brendan, Josh.

Brendan's not looking too happy about it all.

This slide was processed in December 1983, but I don't know if it's part of holiday festivities or not. Typically, from what I can remember, we had Christmas Day at my parent's house, so it may be from that but it could also just as easily be from some other get together. It's probably not from Thanksgiving, since we always did Thanksgiving at my grandparents' house.

Stuffed

There's Jessica with a stuffed, drumming bear. Below is Jeremy with the same bear and Figment. The third slide is me, with just Figment.

For some reason, the darker interior slides are coming out with a banding to the image. I'm not sure if this is some compensation that's happening on the scanner side or something in the original slides themselves.

The Family, 1983

Jumping now to December 1983 (and a particularly dorky photo of myself ... thank you, braces for correcting this), here's the family. Jessica at 9 months, Jeremy two months short of five, and I'm a month shy of 10.

The couch we're on is the old spindle bed that was converted into a couch with the addition of some pillows.

Today, I'm Thirty-Four

I'm using the fact that today is my birthday as an excuse to post these pictures of myself from September 1974 when I was 8 months old.

I finished rescanning the first carousel last night (which is where these photos are from) so I should be onto other things after this, and away from just posting cute pictures of myself as a baby.

For today, though, that's what you get. Enjoy.



Seeing myself getting a diaper change keeps me humble.

More Puerto Rico

More photos from my father's trip to Puerto Rico with the National Guards in 1972. I don't have much insightful to add, other than that I love monkeys.

I'm not sure who that is in the third slide here, but I assume it's someone else with the Guards.

Improved Image Quality

I've made some changes to my scanning setup. While I've only just started to play around with rescanning some of the slides that I've scanned already, I think it's safe to say that things are vastly improved. Color quality seems more true to the slide, and sharpness is greater.

I'm scanning currently at 1200 dpi, which results in an 80MB file that could be enlarged up to about 22" x 14" at 300 dpi -- which is the generally accepted standard minimum dpi for a print of good quality.

Above is side by side of the new result (left) and old result (right). Same thing with below. Then, the third slide is a rescan of the slide of my father and me that kicked off the blog. I think the improvement is obvious.

Note: in the original post for that slide I titled the blog entry "My father and I," but I think that the correct grammar is actually "my father and me." I remember English class and being told to break it down to figure out the proper pronoun. For example: "It's a slide of me" versus "It's a slide of I." Am I right about that?

El Morro Fort, Puerto Rico

In 1972 my father went on a National Guard trip to Puerto Rico and took these photos showing El Morro fort in Old San Juan.

From GoToPuertoRico.com:

El Morro, officially known as Fuerte San Felipe del Morro, sits atop a high promontory overlooking the entrance to San Juan Bay. It is the result of the efforts of many different Spanish engineers over a period of more than 200 years and is one of the largest forts built by the Spaniards in the Caribbean.

My father told me they flew in to Ramey Air Force Base (and, I'm guessing, stayed there). The Wikipedia entry on Ramey can be found here: Ramey Air Force Base

According to the Wiki, Ramey was closed in 1973 as a military facility, so he made it there just under the wire.

Here's the Ramey AFB Historical Association website: www.rameyafb.org

EDIT: My father tells me that this third slide was taken of some abandoned buildings not far from Ramey AFB.

Horsie ride

At 22 months old, I apparently loved horsie rides.

Can you spot: a copy of TV Guide? Extra points if you can figure out which issue it is and who's on the cover.

Cousins

Here's my cousin Emily and I. She lives in Georgia now.

I'd like to point out how my outfit matches the pillow matches the wallpaper. I guess I was a big proponent of coordination, which may explain why I wear nothing but shades of grey now.

Slate painting

Here's my mother, painting Winnie the Pooh on a piece of slate. This is November 1975, but I'm pretty sure I could take almost the exact same photograph today, just substitute in a different craft project. This photo was taken in the upstairs living room, now the dining room.

I can remember there being many slate paintings around the house growing up. I'm not sure any of them are currently on display, but I think we should pull them all out of storage (if they're there) and have a gallery viewing.

Notice the Woolworth bag to my mother's right, on the couch. Woolworth stands out to me as the place where I would get plopped at the soda counter, with a milkshake, while my mother looked for deals. It was located on Main Street in Northampton. Some of the space that was Woolworth is occupied by CVS now.

From Wikipedia, on Woolworth:

The F.W. Woolworth Co. was among the first five-and-dime stores, which sold discounted general merchandise at fixed prices usually five or ten cents, undercutting the prices of local merchants. Woolworths, as it came to be known, was one of the first stores to put merchandise out for the shopping public to handle and select without the assistance of a sales clerk. Earlier retailers kept all merchandise behind a counter, and customers presented the clerk with a list of items they wished to buy.

Me again

Clearly, I was cute. Wish I had an explanation for what happened ...

The Family Cars, 1974

The driveway and the cars. September 1974. In the background is my father's work truck, the West Side Air Conditioning van. In the foreground is, presumably, his play vehicle. EDIT: My father says this was the family car. I think it's a Chevy Vega.

The front yard stretches out behind them to Route 47. This is before the driveway was paved, clearly. Way off in the distance is one of the two willow trees that were in the yard growing up. It grew huge and was cut down a few years ago.

The grass looks freshly mowed.

Mark Twain House

Looking at these photos, I was wondering where they were taken, when suddenly in my head was the thought: "Mark Twain House." I've certainly been there on a school trip and at least one other visit since 1974, but I can't really pull up any picture of the place in my head, so I don't know what triggered the thought.

At any rate, a quick search on Google revealed that my subconscious mind was right. Maybe somewhere deep down I remembered being there?

The photo above is my mother and I. Below is a shot of the building, which is what I compared with pictures found online to confirm my feeling. Below that is a photo of some plants in the same batch, so presumably also from the visit to the Mark Twain House. I included it because I thought it was a nice shot. It looks like it was perhaps taken through a window looking into a greenhouse.

The Mark Twain House website: http://www.marktwainhouse.org/

Mom at the piano

My mother at the piano. It looks like perhaps the house was still being finished. Notice the exposed 2 x 4's in the background, and the mattress up on it's side.

Stroller, finger suck

One thing I've noticed about this first carousel of slides is that it's going to seem like this blog will be all about posting cute pictures of myself as a baby. While I won't be scanning in chronological order, these two boxes of slides that I grabbed last weekend are mostly focused on 70s and early 80s. There are a whole bunch of other slides still in the basement, packaged in cube holders that fit our 80s slide projector, that will be get scanned eventually and those will contain many more pictures of my siblings and the various foster children we had over the years.

For a little while, though, it's going to be mostly about me so be warned.

This one is me, in a stroller, sucking on my ring finger (which was my favorite sucking-finger for many years), on the walkway in front of the house with the front yard and hay fields out beyond.

Deerfield Gardens

My mother at Deerfield Gardens. The slides have the date "Sep 74" on them, which I assume is when this batch of slides was processed. My guess is that they weren't taken too long before that, since it's clearly autumn (as evidenced by the indian corn and chinese lanterns).

My father and I

I've recently pulled several boxes of slides from the basement of my parents' house and purchased a new scanner with the ability to scan slides.

In this slide: my father and I in September of 1974. I was eight months old. My father is wearing his West Side Air Conditioning uniform.