Cordero de Dios

Just another day in Korea Town, Los Angeles, CA 90020

Water Song

this boy and girl were lovers 

came from different towns 

now they both live in the same one 

see each other round 

he saw her at the rose bowl 

just the other day 

she showed him what she bought there 

and they struggled for what to say 

they say we’re made mostly of water 

so how come we can’t find the sea? 

they say true love creeps up on you slowly 

oh how blind some people can be 

this boy and girl had troubles 

lasted fifteen rounds 

both threw in the towel 

no one took the crown 

and time it tends to pass us 

as we look the other way 

now he sells insurance 

and she’s in a non-union play 

oh how i wish we were like water 

we’d float on down into the sea 

if you find true love at your door knocking 

invite her in make her some tea 

this boy and girl were lovers 

came from different towns 

now they both live in the same one 

see each other round 

they say we’re made mostly of water 

so how come we can’t find the sea? 

they say true love creeps up on you slowly 

oh how blind some people can be

~ Colin Hay

Some 15 or so years ago I bought this image at a swap meet just across the California border in Arizona.  Looking back I wished I had purchased the whole set instead of one memento. Such is life.

The other day I decided I would scan it and publish it. I scanned the image twice, the first time as reflective art to capture the outer edges with the black tape and manufacturer’s information and a second time as a transparency to capture the photography itself. This piece is 4” x 3.25”

Q: What is it?

A: A Lantern Slide.

The following information was resourced from here

The introduction of lantern slides in 1849, ten years after the invention of photography, allowed photographs to be viewed in an entirely new format. As a transparent slide projected onto a surface, the photograph could be seen, not only by individuals and small groups, but also by a substantial audience. This new larger scale expanded the utility of photography, changing it from an intimate medium to one that was appropriate to entertainment and educational purposes.

The practice of projecting images from glass plates began centuries before the invention of photography. As early as the seventeenth century the Magic Lantern, or Sciopticon, was used to project painted images on glass for children’s picture shows and for religious displays.  In the 1840s, Philadelphia daguerreotypists, William and Frederick Langenheim, began experimenting with The Magic Lantern as an apparatus for displaying their photographic images. Because the opaque nature of the daguerreotype disallowed its projection, the brothers looked for a medium that would create a transparent image. They employed the discoveries of the French inventor, Niépce de St. Victor, who had discovered a way to adhere a light sensitive solution onto glass for the creation of a negative. By using that negative to print onto another sheet of glass rather than onto paper, the Langenheims were able to create a transparent positive image, suitable for projection. The brothers patented their invention in 1850 and called it a Hyalotype (hyalo is the Greek word for glass). The following year they received a medal at the Crystal Palace Exposition in London. 

The Langenheims envisioned their slides as forms of entertainment, charging a fee to watch their picture shows.  However, within a few years, lantern slides began to fulfill a variety of purposes. While entertainment remained an important function well into the twentieth century, lantern slides had the greatest impact on educational lectures, especially in visual disciplines. They played a vital role in the development of disciplines such as art and architectural history, making possible the detailed study of objects and sites from around the world. 

The first lantern slide producers made their slides using albumen-coated plates and, after a short period, switched to wet-collodion plates. The introduction of dry plate processes, as well as mass-produced lantern slide kits, made the slides easier for amateur photographers to produce and also made them more accessible to schools and universities. 

Besides the photographic medium itself, the process for creating lantern slides remained primarily the same throughout their one hundred year history. There were two ways of printing the images: the contact method and the camera method. The first dictated placing the negative directly on the light-sensitive glass. This required that the negative was the correct size to produce the 3.5x4 inch slide. For larger negatives, the camera method was necessary. Using a camera with a long bed and bellows, the negative and glass were both placed in the camera and printed by exposing the glass to daylight or artificial light. After exposure in both cases, the latent image was developed out with chemicals. After the plate was dried, the image could be hand-colored using special tints. The slide was finished with a mat and a glass cover and was taped to seal the enclosure.

The finished product was placed within a lantern slide projector to be viewed on a wall or screen. The first projectors used oil lamps for light. By 1870, limelight, produced by burning oxygen and hydrogen on a pellet of lime, offered a better, although more dangerous, form of illumination. In the 1890s, the invention of the carbon arc lamp, followed by electric light, provided a safe method for displaying the lantern slide image. 

Self portrait of me and my friend Steve skating a yet to be opened freeway overpass in San Jose, CA, circa late 1970’s.  My old board cut from a Pleasure Pointe (Santa Cruz) blank with Alva wheels & Independent trucks. I’m wearing Rector knee pads and some homemade gloves with high density foam inserts.

Recent photos of the that same board. My wife at the time designed and painted the graphics on the board.  We lived in Los Gatos, CA. The design was a play on “Dog Town”, the famous SOCAL skate culture of the day.  ”Catown” “Mellow Skates” it proclaims.

I remember skating the “park” in Campbell on Winchester (kicked my butt) and the one on Bascom Avenue, my favorite.  I think I remember skating a park in Milpitas and one in the redwoods in Aptos, CA.  Even took my board with me to Denver to visit my friend, skating a park in Aurora, CO. 

Skating down Pennsylvania from Palm into town (Los Gatos) was always a joy! 

It would be sweet to look through my old negatives and find some old skate park photos…

Today’s Roast for this week’s coffee.

A 1 # blend of Brazilian Cerrado and Guatemalan Acatenango.

Ambient air temp outside - in the high 40°.

Keep it moving.

Full City into the second crack.

I smell all smokey like a coffee house.

Not the most even roast - maybe next time I will use a tripod to hold the camera.

12-24-2008

Making a Cake (Pipe Tobacco)

A week or so ago I came across a small pressed cake of tobacco that I put together about a year ago. It was essentially a bunch small but very nice ligero leaf that I had grown as part of my 2007 tobacco crop. It had been de-veined and gone into a partial secondary fermentation when I gathered it up and pressed into the bottom of a wide mouth Mason jar.

I have recently become fascinated by pipe blends that are pressed in layers with a variety of tobaccos and then cut. This re-discovered “cake” sparked my imagination.

Given that is was constructed from similarly cured tobacco the chance to add to it was limited. I then remembered a bottle of Macallan Amber Liqueur, “Single Malt Scotch Whisky Delicately Flavoured with Maple and Pecan.” So I took the tobacco cake and allowed it to soak up as much of the Amber liqueur as it wanted. I then wrapped it in parchment paper and placed it in a press for 3 days in a sunny room.

This photo essay of what happened next.

Light ‘em up if you got ‘em!

“Once I was blessed; I was awaited like the rain
Like eyes for the blind, like feet for the lame
Kings heard my words, and they sought out my company
But now the janitors of Shadowland flick their brooms at me
Oh you tireless watcher! What have I done to you?
that you make everything I dread and everything I fear come true?”

The Sire Of Sorrow (Job’s Sad Song) ~ Joni Mitchell