photography – Page 152 – Steamboats Are Ruining Everything

Years ago, when the worldwide web was new, I had a tiny little non-blog at Columbia, and on it I posted a scan of this photo of my grandfather. I’d made the scan in the school’s computer lab; scanning machines were then exciting and new, and it felt vaguely like theft of technology for me to use it for such a merely personal purpose. Reading through some old family letters this morning, I thought of the photo again, and decided I’d make a new scan, on our home scanner, whose technology is probably fourteen generations better than the machine I used twenty years ago. My guess is that the photo itself was taken in the 1930s, but I’m not sure.

From an old journal: My 9/11

Here’s an entry I made in my journal on 13 September 2001. At the time, Peter and I were living on 11th Street near Fourth Avenue, in Brooklyn. Lota was our black Lab mix, and Nina was my sister’s chihuahua, whom we were dog-sitting. I’m including scans of some photos I took that day as well, which get mentioned in the journal. Hope you can read my handwriting.

I didn’t write more later; I didn’t write any journal entries for the next three months. I don’t remember the rest of September 11 anywhere near as clearly as the part that I wrote down, but I do know that I biked into Manhattan that afternoon with Lydia, a friend of friends who either was, or was about to be, a medical student, and wanted to see if she could volunteer. I took a different camera with me on that ride, and took more photos, including the one of the sun at the top of this post and the ones of Manhattan below.