Today, Google celebrates Gerda Tero’s 108th birthday. I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t remember her name. I’ve been a fan of Robert Capa since seeing an exhibit of his war photography as a teenager. I knew he had a “girl friend” photographer who was killed in the Spanish Civil War. I didn’t realize that she played a similar role to Einstein’s first wife in shaping his now-celebrated work.
Both have similar war styles, but Tero seemed to have a lot more photos of women at war. And I mean at war. Women armed, women shooting in battle, etc. Her iconic photo appears above.
I got tired of modern postage stamps. They were so bland and predictable (more flowers! more historical figures! more landscapes!), and the mere act of sticking them on a letter seemed like wasted effort.
But see what we have here! A Scout with a pony tail! The Starship Enterprise! Reprints of heavily engraved 19th century classics! I love this stuff. Even the 24c Inverted Jenny, though it’s a $2 face value.
This Baroque fairyland is Berlin circa 1900. The Publisher Taschen has published 2 coffee table books of Photochrom images. These are black and white photos that were colored in for reproduction. The results are gorgeous.
The books list prices are around $150 each. I was still tempted till I visited my friends at the Library of Congress who have a lovely collection, too. Free. Online.
I’m reposting this photo because someone asked to reuse it. It is also posted on Flickr. I provided it to someone for an article about selfies a while back. I’ve posted it to Facebook, but my other online copy disappeared when I moved my online photos to Flickr.
Last week we had a tea/party/fundraiser for Minnesotans United for All Families.
That’s the organization that’s trying to defeat the Minnesota constitutional amendment that forbids gay marriage. There are a lot of “nots” in there, which makes it tricky to explain. The bottom line is that we want our married daughters to be able to move here without putting themselves or their children in some sort of legal jeopardy.
I was at the Northern Star Council’s annual meeting today. The PR firm that produced the annual report constructed a Scout’s photo entirely of merit badges. They also produced a Facebook app that converts one’s own photo into a merit badge mosaic:
We were out about town the night before elections and found this:
The location is both a church and a designated polling place for the next-day election.
A row of parked cars indicated a meeting in progress. When we wandered past later, the meeting had broken up. Cooler and wiser heads must have prevailed, since the sign had disappeared.
Today, Google celebrates Gerda Tero’s 108th birthday. I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t remember her name. I’ve been a fan of Robert Capa since seeing an exhibit of his war photography as a teenager. I knew he had a “girl friend” photographer who was killed in the Spanish Civil War. I didn’t realize that she played a similar role to Einstein’s first wife in shaping his now-celebrated work.
I got tired of modern postage stamps. They were so bland and predictable (more flowers! more historical figures! more landscapes!), and the mere act of sticking them on a letter seemed like wasted effort.
Smatters 