All posts in Photos

A couple of weeks ago I got my wish and fatty snow flakes started drifting down onto Portland rooftops in the middle of the afternoon. By the time daylight was gone, the city was a wreck. It took chris more than 5 hours to get home from work. He swears to me there were zombies on the road. Later that night we walked to a nearby bar and cozied up with friends over hot food and drink. Not particularly unusual, but I remember thinking, this is a great night. I think snow is magic that way.

“As I walked away from the Eagle Lunar Module, Neil said ‘Hold it, Buzz’, so I stopped and turned around, and then he took what has become known as the ‘Visor’ photo. I like this photo because it captures the moment of a solitary human figure against the horizon of the Moon, along with a reflection in my helmet’s visor of our home away from home, the Eagle, and of Neil snapping the photo. Here we were, farther away from the rest of humanity than any two humans had ever ventured. Yet, in another sense, we became inextricably connected to the hundreds of millions watching us more than 240,000 miles away. In this one moment, the world came together in peace for all mankind.”

- Buzz Aldrin in Apollo Through the Eyes of the Astronauts

I have tremendous respect for astronauts. To be so empirically brilliant and yet still have that ferocious spirit of adventure–extreme sports ain’t got nothin’ on ‘em, if you ask me. Most astronauts devote their entire lives to the study of space and keep up rigorous physical training without knowing if they’ll ever get the chance to even be part of a mission. See more of these amazing Apollo images here.

I love this old photograph of my grandmother from Christmas of ’75. It’s exactly how I always imagined her when my mother would talk about her–that broad smile, coffee and cigarette in hand. And how ’bout that couch, huh? My grandparents eventually separated (according to legend, because they were just both so darn stubborn). Years after she had passed away I was talking with my grandfather and asking questions about her. He simply replied that, “She was the finest lady of my life.”

I’ve been going through some old family photos lately. The above photograph is of a car that my grandfather built, with some kind of registration number written on the back. He carried this around with him in his wallet for years. Unfortunately, when he was older and living in an assisted living home, one of the nurses accidentally washed his wallet along with his pants, damaging the photo.