Saturday, September 08, 2012

The internet and the ever present accessibility of my computer at the end of my living room have become a drug, a potato chip, chips and salsa, Mexican candied peanuts. It reminds me of taking pictures of William Gibson, perhaps some five years ago. He had rigged a loud bell sound to his email so that every time he received one he would tell me, “I just have to check it.” Since Gibson is always ahead of all of us he was off soon after as @greatdismal on Twitter.

To break my pattern of distraction I have, of late been reading novels furiously as quickly as I can find them at the fast read section of my Oakridge Public Library. The last two, though, were not fast reads (one week limit, and a dollar a day for late return) from that section. The Donna Leon I ordered for delivery at my Oakridge branch of the Vancouver Public Library and the Mathew Pearl was visible on the shelf there, too.

Both kept me safely in bed and away from my living room by-the-monitor-chair. I have been turning off my bedside table light late.

Both novels made me stop at a particular page. I re-read and moved on. But my memory plays interesting and efficient tricks in that I am able to remember on what side of the page I read what stopped me and pretty well within the chapter. I found these two gems:


Stephens smiled. “You see, I have written and ending myself, Mr. Osgood! Yes, the life of the drama writer is not as luxurious as that of the novelists you publish. We must work with what is before us with great respect, but never so much respect that we fail to fulfill our task of pleasing an audience. When we read, we use our brains, but when we watch a performance, we use our eyes – much more trivial organs.
The Last Dickens –Matthew Pearl



Time passed. Signorina Elettra opened her drawer and pulled out that month’s Vogue. She opened it and spread it on her keyboard. Brunetti took a step towards her, glanced at the pages and asked, ‘Do you really think those side vents in jackets are a good idea?’

‘I haven’t decided yet, Commissario. What does your wife think?’

‘Well she’s always liked a jacket without vents. Says it’s more flattering to the figure. That might be because she’s tall. But certainly that one is perfect,’ he said, leaning forward and pointing to a beige jacket at the centre of the left-hand page. ‘I’ll ask her again tonight and see if she has any further ideas on the subject.’

She turned to the Lieutenant but he, apparently having no strong opinion to offer about vents, chose that moment to leave her office, failing to close the door behind him.

‘A man without a sense of fashion is a man without a soul,’ Signorina Elettra said and turned a page.
A Question of Belief – Donna Leon

The latter with the killer quote from the beautiful red haired Signorina Elettra (a computer hacker of great expertise) reminded me of one of the best books I have read this year, J.J. Lee’s  The Measure of a Man – The Story of a Father, a Son and a Suit.

It seems that the week was a week of memorable quotes. One came via email from Vancouver Sun columnist Stephen Hume who wrote:


Alex,

Change is the only constant in life. Shakespeare was, in his own time, like today's TV writers and only one of many. The reason that we equate him with Elizabethan drama is because he was among the best who survived in our memory because they were the best. We've forgotten the scores of lesser talents, some more famous in their own day, and their dreadful revenge tragedies. And we don't know who played his debut Othello or Macbeth. I know this from a Quixotic decision to study Renaissance drama 50 years ago!

I'm not far off 70 myself. I don't feel obsolete. I'm the milk man. I deliver milk and the milk stays the same whether it comes in cans, bottles, plastic bags, plastic jugs or waxed cardboard cartons. I doubt that you are obsolete either. It's important not to confuse the delivery technology for the content! The content -- the story -- is what's important, less so the delivery system, although it to can become the story occasionally, as this correspondence indicates.

Stephen Hume
Addendum

And from How Does Denzel Washington Take Off?

By Terrence Rafferty
NY Times September 6, 2012

Mr. Washington, pressed, spoke about the hours he spent in a flight simulator, getting ready for the harrowing cockpit scenes early in the picture, when his character, Whip Whitlock, has to fight his way to an emergency landing. “You just need to feel comfortable in there,” he said, “need to know what the routine is.”

He continued: “Every little thing you use helps you create the reality. One of the pilots I was working with let me use his flight bag in the movie, so I carried that old, beat-up thing. I always say the universal comes from the specific.”

Friday, September 07, 2012

Alex W-H sitting on an Arthur Erickson/Francisco Kripacz chair owned by Hugo Eppich September 7, 2012, Scotia Dance Centre Mamiya RB-67 140mm lens, Ektachrome 100G

The above photograph of yours truly which I took today, is the end result of a progression of photographs that did not begin in 1992 when I photographed Arthur Erickson in his garden sitting on a Richard Schultz chair. I had taken many photographs of Erickson before and subsequently. The sequence may have begun in 1988 when Business in Vancouver (I was the first photographer who took pictures for this Vancouver business weekly) dispatched me to photograph Ebco industrialist Helmut Eppich. In Ebco’s Surrey plant, a cavernous building, I saw Boeing airliner wings being fabricated and being assembled. My guess is that Eppich, in the third photograph, is holding what I would call an airplane wing rib.

A week ago on Friday August 31st, the very day of my 70th birthday, this obsolete photographer was called by a local arts weekly to take pictures of artists for their fall arts issue. The theme was to be “an artful chair” which was to have a concrete wall as backdrop. The artists were to sit or whatever.

Arthur Erickson on an Eric Shultz chair, 1992 Mamiya RB-67 140mm lens, Ektachrome 100

My initial reaction to the “theme” (all my quotes to specify the weirdness that I saw in the request) was that this was a folly.

But it didn’t take me long to think of Arthur (Art? Nobody that I know ever would have dared called him that.) Erickson and the Eric Schultz chair. Even in 1992 those chairs were in a sad state of disrepair.

The idea of borrowing one of them (the very chair where Erickson once sat, and consider that I special situations I do believe in ghosts and spirits) gave me goose pimples! Unfortunately the president of the Arthur Erickson Foundation, Simon Scott, who manages the Erickson garden where the chairs are stacked on the side of the house, never returned my calls. I did not find out until a bit later that this was to become a blessing in disguise.

I was ready to give up when I remembered Helmut Eppich. He has a beautiful Erickson designed house in West Vancouver. I called him up. He told me that he did not have any Richard Schultz chairs like the ones in Erickson’s garden but that his twin brother (who also lives in an Erickson designed house) would probably satisfy my needs. I called up Hugo Eppich who in a most friendly manner told me he would lend me a chair.

I would like to interrupt my narrative here to mention that the Eppich brothers have manifested an unusual appreciation for houses and things Erickson. In fact Hugo had Erickson look at several lots in West Vancouver in the mid 80s until they both agreed on the one that was the perfect one. Then Hugo gave Erickson full control to build the house as he saw fit, design the furniture, the lighting fixtures and even landscape the garden with the professional supervision of landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander (Robson Square). And because Ebco fabricated and dealt with steel, the Hugo Eppich house became a steel house in which the steel was fabricated to Erickson’s requirements.

Shortly before Erickson died Hugo Eppich had him design a studio to be built at the end of the property. The studio is about to be finished by Erickson’s partner, Nick Milkovich.

When I went to pick up the chair with my friend Paul Leisz who has a bigger car than my Malibu we were given a tour and it became most evident that the Eppich brothers have an unusual respect for Erickson as an architect, as a man, as a thinker and as an artist. Perhaps only Frank Lloyd Wright was another of the few architects given complete carte blanche when building a house. As we toured the house I knew that every door knob, every hinge, everything, was chosen by Erickson. Eppich’s wife had a couple of requests. In the late 80s, when the house was finally built, the Eppichs had small children. She wanted to make sure that when she was cooking in the kitchen or ironing in another room that she could see what her children were doing. The result is a soaring house of steel and glass.

We were shown the chairs. I was let down. The chairs were not the dull gray I remembered. These had been restored and painted white. And when I asked Eppich if Erickson had ever sat on any of them he said, “No.”

Helmut Eppich, 1988 Mamiya RB-67 140mm lens Ektachrome 100

Eppich noticed my blatant disappointment and said,” You haven’t seen the chairs in the living room.”
When I saw the apparitions in chromed steel with blood red upholstery (that's what they were!), I rapidly remembered that I had been in that house before (a fund raising campaign for the Erickson Foundation) and I had seen the chairs.

“These chairs," Eppich told me with obvious pride, “were designed by Arthur and Francisco Kripacz who was an interior designer that Erickson worked a lot with.” Eppich did not have to confirm my suspicion that one of the chairs was the prototype and that his firm Ebbco had fabricated it.

It wasn’t too long a journey for me to take, that the artful chair would be placed by the concrete wall on the roof of the Erickson designed Scotia Dance Centre on Davie and Granville.

I have taken my pictures and they will grace next Thursday’s Georgia Straight. The photographs are very good, perhaps better than some that I have taken in the past. I can only assert that if that is the case it is because I had lots of help from the man whose taste was impeccable in life (in spite of those flip-flops on his feet) and whose ghost was surely assisting and inspiring me in my task.

Thursday, September 06, 2012

Tonight was the last day of the last American National Convention, this week’s version by the Democratic Party. In the last couple of months my wife Rosemary has discovered MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow (I like her lots too). We refuse to glue ourselves to watching regular TV (and God forbid) eat on TV trays while watching it.

There haven’t been any TV trays but I must confess here that we have been watching, when possible, the Rachel Maddow Show from 6 to 7 pm and in the last two weeks our eyes and ears have been pointed at all the major speeches of the conventions. That Maddow was the news anchor  for MSNBC’s Democratic Convention coverage was an added bonus.

It meant I had to have food ready by 6. This food had to be portable (as in placing on the end tables of our den where our TV is) and light. This, in most cases, consisted of blender fruit smoothies and some sort of barbecued meat or vegetable. But the one constant has been my barbecued corn (two ears) which Rosemary does not partake of.

I place the two ears on a very hot barbecue and every now and then I move them with tongs to the long dish you see here that has pats of butter. I do this back and forth until the corn is nicely done (and black in several places). During the cooking I slather Nando’s Extra Hot Piri-Piri sauce. In the two weeks I have gone through three bottles. The last one ran out today before Obama’s speech.

And of course I sprinkle my very hot corn with Meldon Sea Salt.

Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Bronwen Marsden
Guest Blog



The violin was made in 1904, and played by my great-great-aunt as she studied. My grandmother gave it to me when I was big enough to play it, and I studied with it too. It's a beautiful instrument – unusual wood grain patterns on its back, varnish that's deepened to dark amber over the years. Its tone is surprisingly rich, for an inexpensive student violin. It has a wolf note on the D string F sharp, though, which made it unusable in RCM exams. I had to pull out my cheap (and, by comparison, garishly red) modern violin when I went in for my exam. It was ugly, but at least it could play all the notes.

I haven't played it in years. I put new strings on it three, maybe four years ago, but I never even got so far as tuning it. I was never any good at it, anyway.




Addendum
Technical Information

While I have always been a stickler for accuracy in my photography I am aware that the moment I point a camera on anybody there will be a change that I cannot control. I see the person as I want to see the person. But what I see must inevitably be what the person wants or thinks I must see. Any portrait, then is the result of sparring session in which there are no winners. What we see in the end must be a collaboration. Or you could say that it is a double failure. I may think that I captured the person when their guards were down due to my "self-perceived" skill and the person may be revealing something they think I see in them which they don't see and yet... I could go on and on with how impossible it is to take realistic portrait of anybody.

On the other hand, Of late I have been abandoning my stickiness for accuracy in colour reproduction. These pictures might seem odd to some because they are odd. I used Fuji 1600 colour negative film with my Nikon FM-2 and a 50mm lens. I used the modeling light of one quartz powered modeling light that is surrounded by a flash I chose not to use. The film is balanced for daylight which is somewhere around 5500 Degrees Kelvin. The colour temperature of my quartz light should be 3200 Kelvin but because of its age it is probably closer to 3000. The white rip-stop nylon of my 32 year-old 2x3 ft Chimira softbox has yellowed with time. All this adds to an off colour scan of the negative into the realm of yellow, cyan and green. It is virtually impossible to correct the scan to an absolute and all I can do (to my new-found delight) is to offer an interpretation that might be a tad yellow or blue or too red. Whatever the innacuracy nothing can detract from the beauty of Bronwen Marsden, she of the sensual pout.

Tuesday, September 04, 2012

Captain McInns and A-6 Intruder at Whidbey Island NAS

Facebook has become a domain for famous obituary subject “ambulance chasers”. It seems that one hand is hovering and seeking info on the last gasp of the celebrity while the other is ready to post, “She died and this is my favourite Youtube video clip on her. Then the many “friends” will contribute with “likes”.

If anything to me this represents how so many people are all connected to a conventional media in which most of the dying celebrities are Americans. Nobody would post “Reginald Hill died – no more Andy and Peter. What shall we do now?”

Catholic hell would be stuck on a desert island and being forced to read, ad infinitum, aggregated posts of famous deaths.

Since I am no different I will post here the obituary of a famous death. And being as original (or not) as most of this is the obituary of an American.

I am not sure if my paid hard copy subscription to the NY Times will save me from a possible lawsuit for copyright infringement, but here it is:

Lawrence Mead, Jr. Photo by Olin Mills

August 30, 2012
Lawrence Mead Jr., Aerospace Engineer, Dies at 94

By DENNIS HEVESI

Lawrence Mead Jr., the aerospace engineer who led the design team for the A-6 Intruder, the bulky twin-engine jet that served as the Navy’s primary attack bomber for more than three decades, died on Aug. 23 in New Haven. He was 94. His son Lawrence Mead III confirmed his death.

Mr. Mead, a senior vice president of the Grumman Aerospace Corporation (now Northrop Grumman), was named design chief for the A-6 Intruder in the late 1950s. Five years after its introduction in 1960, the A-6 was flying bombing missions off aircraft carriers in the Gulf of Tonkin during the Vietnam War.

“Not sleek, never beautiful, the A-6 would soon prove itself to be a masterpiece of aeronautical engineering,” Grumman World, a company publication, wrote in 1992 when the last A-6 was delivered to the Navy. Equipped with a pioneering digital navigation system, it “became the Navy’s workhorse bomber and the Marines’ primary ground support aircraft in Vietnam.”

Weighing approximately 25,000 pounds, with a wingspan of about 50 feet, the A-6 was capable of cruising at about 500 miles an hour while carrying up to 18,000 pounds of bombs. “That was a tremendous amount,” said Joshua Stoff, curator of the Cradle of Aviation Museum in Garden City, N.Y. “That’s why it was very successful in the Vietnam War.”

In part because of a wing-to-wing aluminum alloy beam, the bulky jet could bear that weight and its rugged fuselage while still being able to take considerable enemy fire. And with the attack-navigation system incorporated by Mr. Mead and his team, ground troops could be covered through cloudy skies and even at night. The midwing jet detected and attacked enemy vehicles traveling at night along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, North Vietnam’s supply line to the south.

Over the A-6’s 32-year history, Grumman built more than 700 of the planes. They flew combat sorties over Grenada and Lebanon in 1983 and during the first Persian Gulf war — “a remarkably long and successful service life,” Mr. Stoff said.

“When we won the contract,” Mr. Mead told Plane News in 1980, “we thought that it would be successful if we could sell 100 Intruders.”

An A-6 at the Pensacola NAS

The A-6 was just one of Mr. Mead’s accomplishments. He was a member of the Grumman team that designed the Apollo lunar module that carried Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to the surface of the moon on July 20, 1969. He was also one of the chief designers of the F-14 Tomcat, the fighter featured in the hit movie “Top Gun.” Lawrence Myers Mead Jr. was born in Plainfield, N.J., on May 11, 1918, to Lawrence and Eleanor Machado Mead, but spent much of his childhood in China, where his parents were missionaries. After returning to the United States, Mr. Mead graduated from Princeton in 1940 with a degree in engineering. He earned a master’s degree there in 1941. Soon after, he was hired by Grumman, which at the height of World War II had more than 25,000 workers at its complex in Bethpage, on Long Island. Mr. Mead worked on the design teams for Navy fighters like the Hellcat and the Bearcat.

Besides his son Lawrence, he is survived by two other sons, Kirtland and Bradford; two sisters, Elizabeth Bolton and Margaret McCutchen; nine grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren. His wife of 59 years, the former Janet Chase, died in 2001.

Mr. Mead never piloted a plane, though he sometimes sat in the navigator’s seat. In recent years he conducted tours at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum, aboard the World War II aircraft carrier Intrepid on the Hudson River in Manhattan — making sure, of course, to highlight the features of the A-6 Intruder.


Captain Shork's Intruder
My conflict with war games
The last Intruders
The beauty of ugliness
Thr Prowler - the beauty of ugliness

Monday, September 03, 2012

Blood Alley Quartet & Goldie Monroe From left, Randy Bowman (drums) Dave Olajide (bass), Gus Vassos (vocals, guitar) Anthony Walker (vocals, guitar) Goldie Monroe (vocals,burlesque dancer)

I have a friend Yuliya Kate who is now a professional dominatrix.  She is pleasant and smiles but if anybody in her presence just happens to ask, “Are you from the Ukraine?” She loses her temper and blasts back, “Ukraine not the Ukraine.”

Yuliya Kate

Ukraine brings to me the image of an old b+w war movie I saw when I was around 20 which featured a German Panzer army racing through Ukraine with tanks and half-tracks. Ukraine is a vastness of flat and its history (the little I know of it) is the history of invaders passing through who might stop for a bite to eat or a woman to forcibly bed. Ukrainians have seen armies come and go. They have seen history in the making much like Aristotle’s “unmoved mover”.

Goldie Monroe, iPhone portrait

When early last week I noticed in facebook that a rock band called The Blood Alley Quartet was sponsoring a burlesque show (I hate burlesque) I noticed four salient facts. The band had Gus Vassos, Anthony Walker (better known as Tony Baloney by those who know), Randy Bowman and a striking blonde singer Goldie Monroe whom I knew as a model called Abby.

I hate burlesque because in early middle age I was exposed to exotic dancing/stripping in Vancouver. My involvement in that scene took me to become a judge at the first ever  Golden G-String Convention in Las Vegas in the mid 80s. One of my fellow judges was Tempest Storm. The competition, was unknowingly rigged against the Vancouver contingent. The performers were not allowed to remove their G-String. Older women or would-be burlesque dancers could shine while our superstars like Lusty Leanne (whose act began, an only began upon the romoval of the G-String) could not. And yet without the help of this Canadian judge (even though I did vote for her) T Rae, a proud Vancouverite won out with panache, poise, eroticism (not of the blatant kind). But being allowed to take photographs in the dressing rooms (wow!) I was attracted to the look and poise of American burlesque dancers who hailed from such places as Peoria, Illinois or Dubuque, Iowa.

T Rae

Tempest Storm, second from left, in Las Vegas

If you consider that the above people (in the first picture of the Blood Alley Quartet) played in punk bands in the early 80s called Actionauts, Corsage and The Enigmas. Then you add to that, one of them, Gus Vassos, took my picture at the Marble Arch as I sat with Paul Wilson Brown (a brilliant keyboard player from a Vancouver pop band called Maurice and the Clichés) and that the woman with the beautiful bum in that picture I photographed in my Mexican pin striped suit while smoking an H. Upmann cigar, you might suspect that the ramifications of my facebook (note it cannot be in caps) sighting the Blood Alley Quartet and its Neverland Burlesque show on September 15 as most psychedelic. You would be doubly correct as The Enigmas was defined as just that a psychedelic band. I must add here that the crazy leader of the Enigmas, a man full of energy (and not enough methylphenidate) had been in a two man band called The Wankers that I saw at the Smilin’ Buddha many times (and never did like them). The only band that was worse in my unprofessional estimation was one called 50% Off that had photographer Lincoln Clarkes on guitar and vocals.

Laura Faye from Peoria, Illinois

The old photograph that I have of The Enigmas features a painting by Jim Cummins (aka Braineater). I contacted him recently for info on the gal in the picture:

Lincoln Clarkes

"That is Emmy. She was my girlfriend. She was in my movie Beauty is the Beast. She made braineater rings for me. The rings were from a design of mine of skull and bones. I think she lives in Texas now. She also played Barbra in the Modernettes video."

Now in the picture of the Actionauts, on the extreme left is Ian Noble who happened to be the second drummer of the Modernettes.

In the years that transpired I photographed Anthony Parker’s father teaching ballet to children and Gus Vassos’s father as a highfalutin, heavy duty commercial real-estate honcho. Paul Wilson Brown, the brilliant keyboard player works for my neighbour across the street who is a highfalutin real estate agent.

Jim Cummins

My daughter Hilary & her Jim Cummins

Enigmas from left to right Paul McKenzie, Brian Olineck, Mike Davis & Randy Bowman Cummins's Emmy behind in painting

What is the common thread here? The common thread is twofold – two men. One was and is Mac (aka Malcolm) Parry the former editor of Vancouver Magazine and the other is former Vancouver Magazine rock columnist “In One Ear” and Associate Editor Les Wiseman.

Lenny Kaye & Les Wiseman

Actionauts from left to right Ian Noble, Gus Vassos, Steve Robertson, Sam Salmon (aka Fish in centre) Anthony Walker (aka Tony Baloney)

Art Bergmann left and Tony Baloney, far right

Corsage, 1983 From left to right Rodney Graham, Chris Grove (with laurel), Phill Smith , centre front, Scout Fairlane (actress,poet) Bill Napier-Hemy, Napoleon, Jade Blade, first nurse, Dale Powers, second nurse, & Tony Baloney far right.

Mac Parry’s Vancouver Magazine was much like the Ukrainian steppes. Doors were left open and all of Vancouver (the political, the artistic, the innovative, the interesting, etc) seemed to pass by after lingering for a bit in Mac’s office. Rock musicians (many in tattered clothing before tattered clothing had any message) checked in at reception where a string of liberal minded receptionists simply pointed in the direction of Wiseman’s office.

From left, Alex W-H, Les Wiseman, Danielle & Mac Parry Vancouver Magazine on Davie and Richards

Modernettes Above Mary Jo Kopechne Left Buch Cherry, Ian Noble, Randy Carpenter

Maurice & the Cliches Maurice Depas left & Paul Wilson Brown far right

I was one of the persons who while strictly speaking was a freelancer, I had a “hovering-shingle-on-the-door” relationship with Vancouver Magazine and I noted and noticed the richness of the invasion.

Under his wing, before anybody else knew of his talents, Mac had a young man with terrible case of dandruff. He was a hanger on at the office and nobody seemed to pin down exactly what he was, did. Few if any were able to discern exactly what Mac saw in the young man who was called Douglas Coupland.

Don Vassos, Gus's dad.

Paul Wilson Brown, Alex W-H & Salem behind Photo by Gus Vassos

Salem and her H-Upmann

Douglas Coupland

And so it was that this photographer was there to record those back and forth fluctuations of Vancouverites and out of towners of fame and the pictures you see here could be connected with many more. Suffice to say I did not know that the tall 6ft two blonde who posed for my class at Focal Point, whose name was Abby would, a couple of years later be posing with burlesque tassels in my garden with three men that had faced my camera at least once or twice or many times, in times past.

Just as Ukraine is just simply Ukraine, I can state also that Vancouver Magazine (Parry’s, Wiseman’s and others like art directors Rick Staehling and Chris Dahl) did not need that demonstrative adjective that is “the” to make it more distinct and special than it was.

Blood Alley Quartet & Goldie Monroe

The Blood Alley Quartet and Goldie Monroe will appear, September 15, in what is now becoming a monthly tradition of burlesque called Neverland Burlesque. The quartet play with other dancers, too. The show is every third Saturday at the Russian Hall, 2012 West 4th Ave in Kits. Doors open at 8:30.

I may be warming up to the concept of burlesque via the Blood Alley Quartet & Goldie Monroe. I enjoyed this video with no fanny wagging and other affected cutesy moves. It puts an elegant and contemporary spin on burlesque.

Sunday, September 02, 2012




A few months ago played a dirty trick on a young friend. She did not respond to my emails. Finally I sent her a communication in which I purported to be my wife Rosemary informing her of my sudden death a few days before. She immediately sent a sensitive response. She then did something that I would have never predicted; she posted about my death on facebook. Fortunately her friends and mine were not linked in any way so there was no apparent fallout from the announcement of my premature death. No flowers were sent.

I have been forgiven and I will not play this trick again, for at least a while.



There are a few pictures that I have taken through the years that are iconic in nature like one I took of urbanologist  Jane Jacobs. Someone downloaded my image from my blog and coloured her big glasses with an orange mirror finish. I was not incensed and let it be. But sometimes my images appear in the most unlikely places.


I wrote a blog about Lillian Gish in which with the kind permission of my friend John Lekich I keyed in verbatim his interview with her in the late 80s. I illustrated Lekich’s guest blog with a photograph of my granddaughter Rebecca dressed and made up to look like Gish.

Every once in a while I check up on Lillian Gish Images on Google and I find Rebecca’s picture in the third or sixth page (depends on the week). There are even links to the photograph where people mention how beautiful Gish was not realizing that it is my granddaughter.

Rebecca, second row, second from right.

It is a strange world where you read about your death in facebook one month and then find out that a couple of months later that in 1940, two years before you were born you were taking beautiful pictures of a lovely blonde,  Karen Campbell who was not to be born for many years after. If you make the proper calculations I would have had to have been at least 20 back in 1940 so on August 31st, a couple of days ago I would have become 92 instead of my more youthful 70. It is a strange world indeed the world of the Web Wide Web.