This photo shows me trying out for the first time another feature of my new Nikon SLR: the timer. So here we are--my brother, sister-in-law, mother, sister and myself--on a couch in my brother's home in Brunswick, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. The wallpaper, the shirts, maybe the couch, probably the hair all tell you it's 1975.
I didn't go abroad that summer, but following Ellen's college graduation in Athens, OH, in May, I spent time back in Evanston, then returned to Cleveland for part of the summer, then took a trip out east to see, among other people, Jim Hicks and his family in Montclair, NJ and David and Pat Hartwell and their new baby in NY. Later still, I visited Nashville for the first time, with my NU friend Harriet, and we made a stop in Columbus, IN, on our way back to Evanston. No, I couldn't have told you all this from memory--I'm reporting thanks to the order of the slides in my labeled boxes.
In Evanston I took pictures of somebody's kitten (I don't remember whose), and made a sort of gruesome still life of a soap dish. (Someone had commented on the way I'd allowed soap to accumulate in one of those in-the-wall holders.)
But my main venture in photography during this time was inspired by a carnival that shot up one weekend in the big parking lot in front of my apartment. Trying out night photography once again, I also experimented with shooting at slower speeds to create blurred effects. Here is the sequence I took, starting with two that unfortunately have heads blocking part of the scene. I won't dignify this set by calling it a "photographic essay," but I do like the way the sequence becomes increasingly abstract as one shot leads to the next.
Back in Ohio I spent an afternoon taking photos at Jim and Dottie's house, mostly featuring their son (you first saw Jamie in a couple of Christmas pictures in the previous posting). One group of shots has people posing in the breezeway between the house and the garage during or after a summer shower:
Another group has Jamie posing next to his father's tomato plants:
And a third set has Jamie being held while framed by willow tree branches:
This was the summer when I first grew a mustache which I kept until a few years ago:
My camera had a red filter that I could screw onto the lens. I believe the next picture is the only time I ever used it. (Maybe it came with the camera--I can't think why I'd have bought it.) Below it is a second picture I took with the timer:
I think this one looks better cropped as two separate photos:
Later in the afternoon we were surprised to see a hot-air balloon cruise over Jim and Dottie's back yard:
Toward evening we went for a walk through some nearby woods where I tried taking photos of some mushrooms:
We came out into a field, where the next photo looks as if Ellen, Jim and Dottie are posing for some folk-rock album cover:
And then, over to a construction area for more of a hard-rock album cover:
Finally, here are Jim and Dottie at a nearby playground. Maybe a kids' storytime album?
Later yet in the summer I was back in New York. Jim Hicks (featured in previous BOXES--see the index) had accepted a pastorate at a Presbyterian church in Montclair NJ, an easy commute from Manhattan, so an excursion to see him and Mary and their now three kids was part of this trip. Here he is in front of his church, evidently right after a service, and then, without the robe, with the whole family in front of the church. A shot of just the kids, Aaron, Rebecca and Jordan, follows.
We went to their house after the service, where I took more pictures of the kids in the back yard:
And here is Jim in his garden, plus a closeup of some kind of squash. The weather looks pretty cool, but the visit must have been around Labor Day at the latest.
I don't recall what else I did in New York on that particular trip, though I took this photo of Eighth Avenue at 18th St. near the Elgin movie house (now the Joyce Theatre).
And I visited the Hartwells (again, see the BOXES index for other appearances), who had a new baby, Alison. I'll include a poorly focused shot of father and daughter because I like their expressions.
The next slides are of Nashville, which I was visiting with my Northwestern friend and colleague Harriet Gilliam, a native of that city where her parents still lived. Maybe I flew from NY to meet her in Nashville and then ride back with her to Evanston, or else we drove down from Chicago. Whatever the case, my slides offer a tour of the city, starting with its replication of the Parthenon:
We visited Harriet's alma mater, Vanderbilt U. (that's the Fine Arts Building in the photo below), and of course the Grand Ole Opry (but didn't see a show).
The Tennessee State Capitol building was imposing both outside and in, with a noteworthy spiral staircase in one hall (Harriet is at the top of it in one [badly framed] shot):
Another stop was at the truly remarkable Downtown Presbyterian Church, built in 1849 in an Egyptian Revival style. Note the columns beside the entranceway, the stained glass windows--really everything.
I no longer know why I took a picture of another downtown building: either I liked its facade or it had some historical significance:
And here is the Cumberland River:
The only other landmark I photographed was Andrew Jackson's home, the Heritage, just outside of Nashville. There was a downpour just after we visited, and though my photo is a bit soft-focused, I like the way it conveys dampness.
By taking I-65 back to Chicago we were able to make a stop in Columbus, IN, the small city famous for its having invited world-class modern architects to build a wide variety of public buildings. (There's even a 2017 movie filmed in and titled Columbus.) Our first visit was to a pre-modern house, the Irwin family mansion (c.1910), whose gardens were open to the public. (The place is now an inn; I don't remember if visitors could tour the house in 1975.) The Irwins were major contributors to Columbus's architectural achievements.
Less than a block away was a more modern bronze sculpture: Henry Moore's 1971 "Large Arch," in front of an I.M. Pei-designed library, a corner of which is seen to the left.
Looking in the opposite direction, you can see Eliel Saarinen's First Christian Church (1942, the first of the modernist commissions):
Another stop was at a Kevin Roche addition (1972) to a bank building:
And yet another was at a downtown shopping mall (since torn down) whose central lobby was dominated by a 30-foot-high Jean Tinguely kinetic sculpture with many moving parts (now with a new building constructed around it).
There is a great deal more to see in Columbus, as I knew from background reading (and would discover upon a second visit some years later), but we must have spent just a couple of hours there. My only other photo is of another traditional but very handsome building, the 1874 City Hall:
After a summer spent zigzagging around parts of the Midwest, East Coast, and South, it wasn't until late December that I was able to get farther West--to California for the first time, as I'll report in the next post.
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