Here is a set of pictures that I bought at a local antique store. I believe that I paid $6 for the whole lot. In general I think of older photographs as being a life contained in one image. We live in a world of camera phones and instagram. Everything is instant and digital. It's tough to imagine a time when people may have only been photographed a few times in their life, or not at all. Right now I could take a picture of myself with the webcam on my laptop...I could even take a picture of myself with the webcam while taking a picture of myself with my cell phone as well.
Anyway, here are the pictures:
What I found interesting about these two pictures was the differences between their suits and how each young man is posed. Same pose and everything, but the guy on the left has a poorly-fitting suit and his stance is more relaxed. The guy on the right was possibly named John, that's what is written on the back, but there's a question mark next to it and I can't read the last name.
I really liked the image of this girl because she's outside, and it has her name written on the back.
Baby pictures. The one on the left has a name and birth date written on the stand, but it also has the date of his death. Don't worry, he lived to be 82, attended college in the 30's and was a successful businessman--I found his obituary online. His picture is also the only one set into a frame, while the others are just glued onto the mounting board.
Other projects are taking over my goofing off with flash fiction time, but I'd really like to get into the habit of writing a flash fiction piece or some poems before dropping into the bigger projects I'm working on. Currently I have one editing project and two short stories of my own that I'm expanding on.
I've been trying some recipes from the Steamdrunks book--not any of the chewy milk punches-- and really enjoyed Gin Milk. My spouse was not a fan of Gin Milk, so he swapped out the gin in favor of Sweet Revenge and opted not to include the nutmeg. And so I decided to share the recipe:
Boozy Strawberry Milk
2 ounces Sweet Revenge
1 cup Milk
1 tsp sugar
Combine in a cocktail shaker with some ice. Shake it a bit to chill and froth the milk. Pour the drink, ice and all, into a glass.
I topped it with a little red decorators sugar, but it's not a requirement.
And you could probably add ice cream and real strawberries to it in order to make a pretty badass boozy strawberry shake.
See what I did with that ultra clever title? Alliteration... anyway, on Thursdays I plan on posting my thrifting and antiquing finds, or just other things that I may, or may not have, bought.
This is actually an item that I did not purchase because I didn't have $125 to spend at the time (it may still be at the antique store, I don't know since I haven't gone back in the past couple weeks). I still wanted to document that I had seen it, so I took this picture through the case. The photo is labeled as "Early image of man dressed as a woman." Judging by the clothing style I tentatively placed this photo at around 1850 to 1860, but if someone else has a better guess then let me know.
What I found so interesting about this image was the dress, the formal-looking pose and the hair. I've seen antique photos of people cross-dressing before (usually wearing far less clothing and in a brothel-like setting), but not this early and not in a rather boring formal pose.
The mundane nature of this photo fascinates me because, in those vintage porn cross-dressing pictures the focus is on sex and playing around, but this image strikes me as being quite serious.
Basically since early January I've been tormented by back to back injuries and illnesses that would give me a couple days off and then launch into something completely different. I think the order was shoulder injury, muscle spasm in my neck, flu, sore throat, one day of laryngitis, bronchitis, sinus infection, pinched nerve in my neck again... I went through at least 100 cough drops, one bottle of ibuprofen, all of my flexeril, a fair amount of pseudoephedrine, and many shot glasses of NyQuil--it's more fun to take medicine that way.
I have been better the past week, but getting everything in order for writing and editing projects. I'm finding time to blog again, though.
The house is set up enough that I'll be posting some pictures of it next week.
And I'm going to start posting some of my thrifting and antiquing finds since that's all I've found to do out here in the middle of near nowhere. I'm usually looking for medical stuff, weird greeting cards, old photos and snazzy clothing, so it will probably be interesting.
That starts tomorrow.
And I'll probably have some flash fiction to post later today or tomorrow.
