I'm scanning slides that my father took when we lived in Africa in the late 1950's. A lot of them are of things (trees, buildings, you know, things as opposed to people) and look like any other vaycay photos. But some of them are much better because they have me in them.
I was interested in seeing these because I have very few photos from that time. Color photography wasn't really a thing yet until the mid 1960's, but you could take photos that could be turned into what were called positive images [Note: as opposed to negative images, and I can't really explain this without a thorough review of how traditional (as opposed to digital) photography works, but the general idea is that light reflecting off an image reacts with chemicals on a piece of plastic film and darkens it. The more light reflected, the darker the film gets, so it's a negative image because light things are dark and dark light. When you then shine a light through this image onto a light-sensitive piece of paper, the darker parts of the negative block the most light, so the paper stays lighter, the process is reversed and the result is a positive print, which are all the things your parents have in albums]. These were small transparencies that were viewed by projecting them onto a screen and called "slides."
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| Note that the slide says Kodachrome. Kodak had a monopoly, not on the film but on the processing. |
I am not aware of ever having seen these things actually slide anywhere, but I'm sure the name means something.
Long story shortened only slightly, I knew that most of the pictures my dad took when we were in Africa were like this because I remember seeing them when I was a kid, so I slidenapped them from my father's house and am scanning the interesting ones.
Aside from noticing how cute I was, one thing that is clear is that I was not Frank when I was little, I was Frankie. Every picture of me says Frankie. I've always wondered about having a single syllable for first and last names (and no middle name to add an initial, hence the titular E). If my parents wanted me to have a two syllable first name they could have just given me one. Maybe it was some kind of buyer's regret because they clearly did not call me Frank. Frankie seemed to have liked climbing and drinking, based on the slide labels.
These days, my father mostly calls me Frankie when he's going to scold or lecture me. Okay, that's most of the times he talks to me, but he does call me Frank from time to time as well.
There's all kinds of other interesting stuff in the 2 boxes I took. I will share it as the summer goes on.
Aside from scanning, I've been riding my bike, even in the heat, and am enjoying it as much as ever. I love the breeze and it's meditative for me. Because you're doing this repetitive motion and yet at the same time have to pay really close attention to everything going on around you if you're trying to avoid that death thing. There really are a lot of ways to kill or maim yourself riding a bicycle, from hitting a pothole and flying off the bike to getting pancaked by a car either ignoring/not seeing you or deciding to do something to get around you. My favorite move was the guy who passed me on the left in order to make a right turn in front of me when I was going straight. How did that idea even occur to them, much less get acted upon?
Today a woman just blew through a stop sign. I could have hit her, but I was watching her and I could see she hadn't even looked in my direction. She was totally focused on where she was going and what she wanted to do. But that's the kind of thing you have to do on a bicycle. You have to see everything. At least I do, and I think that's why I've been riding regularly for nearly 20 years and never even came close to getting in an accident.
One last question. Why are there signs on traffic lights that say "Wait For Green?" When is that not the case? Are there times I can just go because I feel like it. I don't like this kind of confusion.
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