Friday Randomness
Let’s see if I regret using up several random type items in one post during NaBloPoMo. I have a couple more recipes and book reviews for you, so we’ll see what happens after that. For now, I will keep today’s post to 5 items.
One of our local Little Free Libraries has been converted to a food pantry for those losing SNAP benefits due to the government shutdown. I hate this. I mean, it’s a great idea, but I hate that it’s come to this. Thankfully, my county is handing out pre-loaded debit cards to folks that get SNAP, so at least there’s that.
My decluttering project continues. I gave away this leather satchel type book bag from my graduate school days. I have no idea why I have kept it this long, except that I like it. But I haven’t used it in about 30 years, I don’t think.
I found 4 photo albums that were my mom’s. One is solely pictures of her cats, Merry and Pippen. The other three are 90% bad pictures of Juneau. The street she lived on, trees she liked, etc. She didn’t have a good eye for photography, so often things are out of focus or centered wrong or whatever. I have a bunch of shoe boxes full of pictures from the last 40+ years. Well, mostly from about 40 years ago until about 10 years ago, when we stopped using a film camera. Lots of pictures of when Maya was a baby. I have photo albums, but these are the pictures that didn’t make the cut. So I’m thinking I will get rid of most of the pictures from my mom’s albums, and go through my pictures and see which ones I want to keep. I started yesterday, and I got from 3 shoe boxes down to 1.5, throwing out duplicates or blurry ones or pictures where someone’s eyes are closed, that kind of thing. Next I will need to put them in order, then go through the albums. It’s a project, I’ll tell you.
Apropos of Wednesday’s picture of the walker at the BART station, I have this picture from several years ago. A single crutch, discarded jauntily in front of a traditional Chinese medicine establishment. I assumed the person was immediately healed and sprinted off, but who knows.
Lastly, here are some photos of trees from my walk yesterday. Left to right, some fall foliage, a grapefruit tree with ripening fruit, and a persimmon tree. I don’t like persimmons, but I think they’re pretty on trees.
8 Comments
StephLove
I would have such a hard time culling photos, but it’s a good project because when you are done you will have only the best ones.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen grapefruit on a tree. Oranges, yes, all the time when I spent a semester in Spain and in botanical gardens, but never grapefruit.
Maybe the TCM center left the crutch there as advertising.
J
Culling the photos was difficult for sure, especially when so many are of people. I just got in the zone and said, ‘is this a good picture?’ If the answer was no, out it went.
I like your idea of advertising for the crutch!
Nicole MacPherson
In my Calgary neighbourhood, there was a little free food library on our street. It started during the pandemic, and I hope it helped people. I think it did!
J
It’s a great idea. I mean, there are food banks and other places as well, but the more ways to help, the better.
Jenny
All the photos from back in my parent’s day were terrible. Remember this was before digital cameras- you just pointed the camera, clicked, waited weeks until it was developed and hoped for the best. I don’t think people were trying to take really quality photos, just trying to capture memories. Now that we have iphones, people are more interested in making photos better.
Ha ha, that crutch in front of the Chinese medicine place… yes, they were obviously cured and sprinted off! So funny.
J
You make a good point about the intention behind photos for most people back then. Just trying to capture a moment. So all of the pictures of my mom’s town, they definitely meant something to her. I remember when Maya was an infant, I was frustrated that I wasn’t getting good pictures, and Ted told me that the key was to not worry about the expense of the film and developing, just take a bunch, and keep the ones that turned out. Well, the best of the best went into photo albums, and now we have level 2 that I am going to keep and put in photo albums, and then there will be level three, which will be leftovers if I run out of photo albums, and will go back in a box. Then level 4, which are the ones I threw out. I mean, it’s nice that we went to the zoo and took a picture of a hippo, but I don’t need to keep that hippo picture anymore. At least I hope not, since it’s gone now.
NGS
Last weekend I spent a LOT of time culling photos. Now I have two totes in my guest room and I have to figure out what to do with them. I think I might scan a lot of photos of me (baby NGS!) and do a blog post or two and organize the rest of them into albums.
My mom was notorious for her bad photography so it was easy for us to throw away a lot of photos. But there are some fun ones in there!
J
Yay! Looking forward to seeing pics of Baby NGS!