cold discipline for solo travellers
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I‘ve been thinking a lot this week about my immediate forebears in my mother’s family, thought that’s only been intensified by the ongoing project of scanning my mother’s collection of family photos that includes those of both my grandmother and great-grandmother.
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Thank you for your variety of comments on my first scanned image of my grandfather and me. As promised, the harvestmother and I spent a productive Thursday evening eating curry and scanning more images from the family archives. All of these were from my grandmother’s collection, which my mother went through and rationalised when Grandma died in 2005. (The rationalisation was of necessity, given the volume of recent images taken by my uncle on his travels with my grandmother, in which the photographer’s goal seemed to be to record every moment of significance from a dozen different angles. One can’t fault his thoroughness.)
Many of the images I am reluctant to share in this forum, for two general reasons. One is that we have perhaps only two or three photos of many of my ancestors, and only one of some. My grandfather’s family in particular lived in what might be called genteel poverty, with great dignity in difficult circumstances. In keeping with their times, they were private people (see the latter half of this entry, following “Anyway”, for an idea of what I mean), and there seems to me a disjunction between the way the images of them are taonga in our family and the bright, harsh light of the internet.
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After many years of thinking about it, I finally bought a scanner. This is the first image that I scanned, this evening. It’s me with my grandfather. The family story goes that whenever he was asked to hold infant me (say, while my parents were setting the table), I would immediately fall asleep, which would necessitate everyone waiting until the powerful nap had ended before the task at hand (say, eating dinner) could be undertaken.
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Embedded below the cut is a slideshow of my holiday photos from Tokyo, Yokohama and around the Kantō region. These images form an incomplete record of my trip, since several of my friends worked on the “best camera takes the pictures” principle, and mine was never the best. Let the achronological record begin!
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I wafted in, on the scent of the last of the cherry blossoms.
Everywhere were tiny elegances.
Even the urging toward civic-minded behaviour was done with grace, albeit an authoritarian grace.
These TwitPic images are ripped from my phone. I hope to assemble a wider composite of my adventures with a certain amount of help from from my flickry (which I’m still editing) and my friends’ lovely photos in the next few days.
ETA: looks like you can’t hotlink to TwitPics.
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The days of ‘92
16 September, 2009
in O internet, commentatrix, in Aotearoa, the social round
A recent article on the Fairfax webpages profiled a group of school pupils preparing for the annual ball. Here they are, dressed up and excited, as featured in the main shot of the article. There is also a series of four- or five-minute videos, which I confess I haven’t viewed. It would be an exercise in nostalgia, which, as you’ll see, doesn’t sit completely easily with me.
To the Ball
My high-school ball, or formal as we called it at the time (“balls” were for the posh schools) was nearly seventeen years ago, a literal half lifetime. I wore a dress my mother made for me, from a wedding-gown pattern. I chose the fabrics: crushed velvet for the bodice and sleeves and a black background with red rose-print for the skirt. I wore my mother’s jewellery, and possibly her shoes too. Though my skirt was full-length, I wore patterned black stockings which I saved for years, until they no longer fit.
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