Five O'Clock Somewhere

Welcome to Five O'Clock Somewhere, where it doesn't matter what time zone you're in; it's five o'clock somewhere. We'll look at rural life, especially as it happens in Rio Arriba County, New Mexico, cats, sailing (particularly Etchells racing yachts), and bits of grammar and Victorian poetry.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Photographs from the past

The challenge is preserving them

There’s a bit of a sense of déjà-vu around here. Tadpole’s getting recruiting mail from colleges based on his scores on the PSAT.

Back some years ago, my PSAT score was high enough that I was a National Merit semifinalist. I got tons of recruiting materials in the mail. Most of it, I looked at, but then I dumped it in the bottom of my bedroom closet. I ended up with a walk-in closet knee-deep in college recruiting literature. I also got personal contacts from recruiters from a few colleges that really wanted me. It wasn’t the intense attention that top athletic prospects get, but it did give me the idea that I could go wherever I wished. So I applied to only one college, and I got admitted to that one and also to two others that decided to admit me even though I didn’t apply.

Tadpole’s now beginning to get the college recruiting letters because of his PSAT score. Wednesday, he got an email from the folks at Arizona State. He’s interested in architecture as a possible major, and ASU has a good program – what you’d expect when many of the buildings on campus were designed by Frank Lloyd Wright or Paolo Soleri. ASU also has a good music program, which is something Tadpole might consider as a minor. When I was in high school, the high school choir went on tour, and ASU was one of the stops along the way.

So I dug out some old photo albums to show Tadpole the pictures I took when the choir was on tour. I especially wanted to show the buildings designed by Wright and Soleri. It took me a while to find the right album and the right part of the album, and while I was looking, I saw a lot of photos that I had taken back then. I was startled to find out how very much Tadpole looks like his uncle Jerry at the same age – Tadpole’s hair is a shade or two darker, but other than that, the two are almost indistinguishable.

Tadpole saw a lot that he liked on the ASU website, so that’s now on his list of institutions that he’s considering.

Meanwhile, I found a lot of interesting stuff in those old photo albums. I have pictures of the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad from 1972, the second year it was operating. I have pictures of the Very Large Array radio-telescope from when it was still under construction and only partly functional. I imagine those pictures might be worth contributing to an archive somewhere.

And I also found some pictures of Fuego when he was small, that might be good for some blackmail. The one with the chocolate cake is a family classic that everybody has seen, but how many people have seen the one about scrubbing ears in the bathtub?

Meanwhile, I have all of these old photos in decrepit albums. The albums are the cheap sort with self-stick pages, and over the years, they have lost their stick. I have also learned that this sort of album doesn’t really preserve photos, because the pages are too acidic. I’m going to need to work on a new system. I hope Mother Superior and her friend Chronicler are available to help -- there's some good history here to preserve.

1 Comments:

Blogger Pat said...

Ah, memories. And, the opportunity to make more.

Thu Mar 15, 12:40:00 PM MDT  

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