Official senior citizenship

Happy May! It’s my birthday month, when I attain official senior citizenship (by some measures, anyway). My Medicare kicks in, I’ll garner Honored Rider status with Lane Transit District (free bus rides!), and will acquire a new birthday gadget. The latter has been ordered: it’s a 9mm f/1.7 ultra-wide-angle lens for my micro four thirds format cameras. I think it will be a fun lens, with a wider angle-of-view than any lens I’ve ever used before, in any format or system.

Speaking of photography, my friend Blake and I took a photowalk in and around downtown Springfield yesterday afternoon. Selections from my shots will follow this post’s prose. I went for a little extra creativity in the Lightroom processing phase with some of the images.

Today is looking to be very warm and sunny, and—it being May Day—there are several public events scheduled here and there (downtown, at the university, etc.), including protests and strikes. I’m planning to try to get into the thick of it with a camera or two and see what I can snap. I had tons of fun a couple weeks ago photographing downtown at Saturday Market—which featured protesters, marketeers, and God-Squaders all packed into a small area. So I’m betting today will be jolly good as well.

I’ve found an excellent new (to me) YouTube channel to binge, featuring interviews with film photographers as well as philosophical rants and idea pieces by the channel owner, Willem Verbeeck.

And now, a few of yesterday’s Springfield photowalk pictures…. 

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Dicking around with the GM1 at home

When adequately filled

To follow up on the Pouf! blog entry a few days ago, I wanted to show how the Moroccan leather footstool appears when adequately filled. I think it looks great. Betty has been attacking it lately, so it’s obviously already becoming a beloved member of our furniture family.

If you think you’d enjoy some light but smart mystery fiction involving jazz subjects, I highly recommend a trio of books by Bill Moody: Solo Hand, Death of a Tenor Man, and The Sound of the Trumpet. The latter two involve real-life musicians Wardell Gray and Clifford Brown. These books were published in the late 1990s, when I first read them. I just re-read the first two and am in the middle of the third. All are available at the Eugene Public Library; well, all but The Sound of the Trumpet, which will be when I’m done.

And speaking of books, yesterday two volumes recommended by friends arrived in the mail: Dragonflies and Damselflies of Oregon by Cary Kerst & Steve Gordon, and Jon Miller’s Confessions of a Baseball Purist (written with Mark Hyman). Miller is a funny man and one of my favorite baseball play-by-play radio announcers. He’s been working for the San Francisco Giants since the early 1990s, and has also spent time with ESPN, the Baltimore Orioles, and the Oakland Athletics.

And speaking of baseball, a pitcher with a great name—Hayden Birdsong—performed masterful relief work for three innings last night to help San Francisco defeat the Milwaukee Brewers in the first Giants home game since April 9. Nice to come back to Oracle Park and win the first game of the homestand!

We are kind of obsessing

        After almost daily transmissions for three weeks, Radio Free Random has hit a random hiatus. No shows since April 15. That’s randomness for ya!

Baseball, on the other hand, has shown no sign of abating. I’ve watched or listened to all 22 Giants games played so far, keeping score with #2 HB soft Ticonderoga pencil in a college-ruled notebook. The team is doing quite well, with hiccups here and there—like yesterday when they blew a 3-run lead in the bottom of the ninth in Anaheim and allowed the Angels to come back and win with a walk-off 3-run double—after hitting an Angel with a pitch and forcing in a run, darn it.

As Mrs. Random mentioned in her latest blog post, we are kind of obsessing over a house that we may have a chance to buy. There are lots of uncertainties and questions, and at the moment we have no control, but that’s not stopping us from fantasizing. If nothing else, it’s demonstrating rather clearly to us that we’re kinda ready to move on, leave this neighborhood we’ve lived in for 35 years, and try a new domestic situation.

On Saturday I took my new (to me) Lumix GM1 camera downtown, on foot, for some street photography. The prospect of Saturday Market, Farmers Market, and lots of anti-Trump protesters (and, it turns out, bonus zealot preachers) all happening in a small area was very alluring. I’ll post some images after the prose.

First stop Saturday, though, was the downtown public library, where I returned several books and DVDs that we’ve had checked out for a couple months. I had to wait while a dad with two young boys refereed them taking turns putting their books into the slot, onto the conveyor belt, as they squabbled back and forth. “Now Johnny let Timmy put his book in.” “Thank you Johnny for letting Timmy return his book.” “Please don’t argue with each other.” “Thank you Timmy for letting Johnny put his book in.” ETC. (Not their real names.) I’m sure the boys felt very empowered. Anyway, after forever, I finally got to put my books and discs into the return slot.

Then, as I was taking off my jacket (the outside temp was rising) and stuffing it into my backpack, a young woman who’d been sitting on one of the nearby benches approached me. “Hi, it looks like you’re interested in photography—you’ve got a camera on your neck and another camera there!” (I’d also brought my Canon S120 and it was out while I arranged the contents of my backpack). “Yes, and I have more cameras at home,” I laughed. Turns out she’s a University of Oregon student and needed subjects to interview for a class project. Apparently she was not having much luck, because when I agreed to an interview, she thanked me profusely, “You’re saving my ass here!”

Her name was Gracie, and the interview was fun. After getting my name and age and learning that I’m retired, she wanted to know what I do with my time. I mentioned typewriters, photography, baseball, and Radio Free Random. She immediately glommed on to RFR and wanted to know all about it. Turns out Gracie’s a podcaster and YouTuber, so we kind of talked shop. And I made her squeal when I subscribed to her YT channel on my phone there on the spot. So that was fun. After the interview I headed over to 8th and Oak where the action was happening.

Pouf!

Moroccan pouf shortly after arrival.

What’s the frequency, Kenneth? Oh, about 2 blog entries per month and plummeting, apparently. The flurry of posts here from June to March was mainly driven by medical updates, and now that these are thankfully few and far between, I guess I don’t feel as impelled to propel words out onto the internet.

That and the boring fact that I’m still in the same obsessive grooves, personally: Radio Free Random, baseball, and photography. The first two have been giant occupiers of my time (Go Giants!). The camera hobby is a bit more in the fits-and-starts category lately, depending on how often we get out and hike. I keep thinking about street photography but not getting off my butt and out there.

We’re still looking at houses on the internet, and Mrs. Random actually went to some open houses a couple weekends ago. We’re still quite open to the idea of moving sooner rather than later, but it would have to be to a place that really ticks the right boxes and inspires real passion.

Last week I ordered a Moroccan pouf (aka ottoman, hassock) for our old Kennedy Rocker. It arrived empty! A little research revealed that this is standard practice. You buy the pouf and it’s your job to fill it, whether with fiberglass beads or foam or blankets and pillows and random fabric from around the house. We chose the latter option: soft stuff we’re not using. It holds a lot! We’re still filling it. It’s to the point where it works as a footstool—but if you sit on it, it squishes way down.