Ski Jumping in Eau Claire

We went to the ski jumping contest on January 20, 2018 in Eau Claire, Wisconsin.   The weather was mid-winter perfect, just above freezing which is about 10 degrees warmer than average and well above the dreadful cold it's capable of her.  Consequently the hardy locals were out in force.  I started taking pictures from the bottom of the hill.

Like watching a jet landing, from a distance the contestants didn't look like they were moving all that fast.

If a contestant made a good long jump, the announcer told the crowd to shout "Dilly Dilly".    Dilly Dilly is written in the snow on the right so this jump clearly rated a shout.

I clambered up a somewhat icy packed-snow route to a lookout part way up the hill - a bit of which shows in the first picture on the left side.  It was the perfect place to watch the contestants come sailing silently by.  I was amazed at how suddenly they appeared, the height some attained, and how little time I had to frame them in my camera before they were past.   It's hard to believe they could go so fast and not break every bone in their body when they landed.

You can see how high this skier was and get a sense of how fast he was moving.

I ran into some of my relatives from the Huber clan at the lookout, showing the kids the scene.

My son was wandering around the lookout with me, a fellow sturdy it's-not-that-cold Upper Midwesterner.

The biggest adventure of the night for me was walking/sliding back down.   Many kids just lay down and slid down the hill but given my maturity and sense of dignity, I carefully walked down instead.

Some of my warmth addicted southern friends have bragged knowingly about how balmy it is where they live but they wouldn't see something like this on their darned sunny boring beaches.  Ski jumping under lights is quite a spectacle and let me tell you, these contestants could really fly!

Carleton College Dance Bands 1939-1940

My dad had told me he had a dance band when he was a senior at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.   Some years ago I found the picture above of the band I'm quite sure he was in from his junior year - he's sitting at the piano on the right.  He was a junior in 1938 and 1939.

I was going through a scrapbook my father had put together somewhat later with photos of his own band.

Dad not only had pictures of his orchestra but wrote useful information.   He was at the piano at Carleton's Great Hall - I'm not sure what building that hall is in - and went by the name of Freddie Leighton then, Frederick Leighton by the time I showed up after World War II.   This shot would have been in early 1940, the 1939-1940 winter.

I figure that dance number one would have been in later 1939 since dad is directing the orchestra.

It's clear that dad got much farther into the popular music of his day than I'd realized.  By my time in the 1950s  he would practice the piano only occasionally and not in organized groups.  This does explain his love of big bands, the hot music of his day.   And like many kids, I now recognize another area where I really didn't know my dad very well.   It looks like he had great fun, maybe explaining why he smiled so much when he played the piano.   His band days ended as far as I can tell when he graduated in June of 1940.

Offset darkroom film

I worked part time in 1973 in a print shop darkroom - knowing my way around a regular black-and-white film darkroom gave me transferable skills to develop film for the offset printing process current at the time.   The film I shot and processed at the print shop was used by a "stripper" who laid out paper sheets that were used to make aluminum plates used to print on paper.   This dark room process undoubtedly is done digitally now.

This gave me a chance to experiment with the print shop film I was using, extremely contrasty stuff that had only black and whites, no grays.   I took relatively small pictures I'd printed in my regular darkroom at home and photographed them using the camera at the print shop.  After developing the film, I took them home and printed them.  I scanned these negatives now for the sake of this blog.   Most of these were shot while I was a student at Midland Lutheran College in Fremont, Nebraska (now Midland University), the bulk of them fellow students.

Looking at the pictures I selected, it's pretty obvious I was a single guy - my favorite subjects were pretty young women.  By taking out information - all the shades of gray - what is left really sticks out.

I used a 24 mm wide angle lens on my 35 mm camera to distort this picture.

My 200 mm telephoto lens gives an entirely different look.

I'd had fun in the past taking black-and-white pictures through snow and thought this would be interesting.   And note there are actually males in this shot.

This is another picture of a girl, in dress typical of that time.

1973 was during the time of protest and the psychedelic -  this was about as close as I got to being "with it".  Although most details are obscured, I was in my darkroom in the basement.

This is a clearer picture of  me in the darkroom.   Part of the film I developed in the print shop darkroom were "halftones", film where I shot pictures through a screen to produce the dot vital to printing pictures on paper.

I had taken this picture of my younger sister earlier, in 1967.   In painting art class in 1973, I blew up a piece of a screened negative like this onto a three by five foot canvas, making each dot an inch or so across.   The canvas had to be viewed at a distance - across the street or so - for the mind to form a coherent image.

I'm back to attractive young women, in this case at a ticket booth at a Midland sporting event.

I found this photographic experimentation interesting, even arresting at times.   However, coupled with a great deal of additional experimentation, I've come back to prefer pictures with the full range of visual information - I miss the grays that are so critical to black-and-white photography.

War Women's Work

I have heard tell that women had to take over and do "men's work" while the men were away during World War II but hadn't realized my mother had done such work while my dad was gone.   I ran across a picture in my parent's things with writing on the back - mom had apparently mailed this photograph to dad, who was a supply officer in Calcutta, India at the time.  Here's what she wrote:

One of my daughters wanted to put this message and the following picture on her wall, evidence that her grandmother was an empowered woman ahead  of her time.  Mother was a small, slight woman but surprisingly mechanically adept when given the chance, which subsequently wasn't often.   I knew she had it in her.

Cider Making

Making cider is an American tradition in our area back into the 19th Century.   A cider press made itself into our family, a hundred years or so old with the wooden innards rebuilt several times.   Its become a yearly tradition getting the families together to press cider.

This was a good apple year with sufficient apples for the crew we had.  I got a chance to play with several of my old film cameras, thus the initial black-and-white photographs.

Wasps were a problem so a shop vac was added to deal with the pests.

We've talked about adding a motor to the press but so far, we have what we refer to as a kid powered press.   Our adult children are the backbone of the grinding operation - it's physically challenging for us senior cider makers.   We have numerous grandchildren but they're too small to power the grinder for long.

Washing the apples before grinding is quite an operations with kids helping.   You will note the wild variety of apples in the water - my orchard has some strange and wonderful types.

The leavings from the pressing ended up being driven down and fed to the cattle.

After a minute or two the children lose interest in cider production.  To deal with this, some adults monitored them in various impromptu activities such as cattle watching.

Big bovines were quite interesting at a safe distance.

I got to hold several granddaughters for a picture,  keeping them out of mischief temporarily.

Some of the boys attempted to play in a deep spring-fed pool before being scared off by the adults watching them.

As the operation wound down, the gator - a farm workhorse rather than a toy - was used to give kids rides.

I caught the riders in the gator as they motored by.

It has been a wet fall but it was warm and sunny cider day.  We had a fine time and ended up with more cider than we probably needed.   It was satisfying to keep up a fine old farm tradition.

My Trusty Old Hat

I'm a big proponent of hats, to keep the sun and rain out of my eyes.   For a number of years I've used and abused my beloved white Tilley hat, which had become old and frayed.   I'd already replaced it but keeping the old one for real work at my orchard.   I had been wondering when I would finally give up on the old thing when divine intervention arrived.

I was out at my orchard, motoring around and cutting the grass under my apple trees, when a branch knocked the hat off my head.  I was on a slippery side hill and before I could react, my zero-turn mower slide back over my hat and executed it.   I'm modeling the remains below.

My mower does a nice job of cutting.   I should have looked sadder but this minor disaster took care of my letting go of an old friend.

I was out picking apples a few weeks later wearing my new hat just a few feet from where the old hat met its end.  No clothes last forever so I'm keeping my hat mourning to a minimum.   It's just that I was so comfortable with that hat.

Remembering Our Babysitters

My Babysitters

Babysitters are an important but underappreciated part of our lives, particularly when they're your own babysitters.   In the mid- 1950s, 1956 or so, my parents had my sister and I watched by Tina and Stella Halderson, two old maid sisters who I can barely remember.  My parents - although they'd long since left Winona, Minnesota where the sisters lived - somehow kept in touch.   I apparently was a memorable kid and the sisters wanted to see me, so I dropped in on their little African-violet-filled house in 1973.

I remember them from the 1950s as being really big and old.  By the time 1973 arrived, they were considerably smaller and genuinely old.

Stella was the sister at least overtly in charge, charging more to babysit because she had graduated from high school.

Tina was the quiet sensible sister. 

It's hard for adults like me to determine what we learned from our babysitters - we were too young to bring back those memories reliably.   I do remember them fondly but can't tell you why.   I'm convinced that I learned important lessons from these two good people.