I still love Shorpy.com

Shorpy is an amazing website. Recent uploads include a very clear and high resolution street scene from 1864 Atlanta.

1955, Larkspur, California. Our neighbor Mr. Cagwin at age 98. Born 1857 in Joliet, Illinois; as an infant came west via sailing vessel from New York and by litter across the Isthmus of Panama; selling newspapers in Hangtown, California, at age of five when the Civil War broke out; worked at Carson City Mint, then San Francisco Mint at the time of the earthquake; retired in 1922. My brother, doing occasional yard work for the Cagwins at the time, took this Ektachrome slide in their Arts & Crafts style home, which they had built after moving to Larkspur in 1905.

For Rafferty!

Coney Island, 1905. Click through to the large version, and you can see people in evening dress, shimmering between the lights.

We'll take a trip up to the moon
For that is the place for a lark
So meet me down at Luna, Lena
Down at Luna Park

Totally Galvanica.

Good night, Moon.

Lots of stuff going on today. Visited an old friend and his wife, and their two kids. Took velvetpage's father to supper. Went shopping, and ran into bandersnitch.


Elizabeth got a special treat tonight because she cleaned the backroom. She stayed up till 10:30, and we went star gazing. The telescope is a $20 Vivitar 50mm, basically the cheapest "real" telescope on the market. It's not a toy, but it's a lot more useful for spying on neighbours than stargazing. However, you can see the bands of Jupiter's cloud cover, and you can see Saturn's rings, and that's nothing to sneeze at.

It came with a ridculously light aluminum tripod that wobbled for 20 or 30 seconds anytime I adjusted the telescope position. I swapped it out with a old solid camera tripod I got at a thrift store.


Moon-gazing, mostly. And yes, it was mostly a matter of sitting in a dark yard, being dined on by mosquitos while I fiddled with the telescope. But she seemed to like it.


We got some nice views of the Moon, and... er... a star. A bright one, nearly overhead. I did attempt from photography through the telescope, but this is a fussy business without the right tools, and even fussier when you have an excited 6 year old nearby, poking at the telescope and jogging your elbow. This was the best I got.


Elizabeth wanted to make a creepy photo.

While examining the star, a satellite or faint meteor zipped through the field of view. It was not the ISS, as I'd checked the times it would be visible from Hamilton. That experience, of peering at this tiny circle of sky just as something went darting past, was very cool.