Category Archives: Thoughts

Making of a Christmas Card, 2024

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Unlike some years, there was never any doubt as to what this year’s Christmas card would be. I took the basic image last Christmas Eve.

Last Christmas was a pretty dismal one. Mum had died just a couple of weeks before, and to make matters worse, her funeral was a super spreader event. Everyone was sick with either COVID or a bad cold; I was in the latter category. While I tested negative, I felt pretty miserable for the several days before Christmas, and had to cancel the plans I’d made with my sister for Christmas Eve.

By the time Christmas Eve rolled around, I was feeling slightly better, and didn’t feel like just sitting around the house feeling miserable for myself, so I decided to drive down to Nantasket to see the ocean, and hopefully, some pretty Christmas lights. I drove all the way to the end of the spit, took a few pictures of a Christmas tree decorated with lobster buoys, then turned around. By this point it was late dusk. As I approached the beach again, I saw a gazebo decorated with white lights. I pulled over, and took a bunch of pictures from a bunch of angles. I knew almost immediately that would make a good card.

Gazebo with lights on it -side viewGazebo with lights on it - wide angle emphasizing framingGazebo wide angle

Since I’ve moved, I decided I wanted the card to also serve as a change of address notification. I bought a wreath for the front door, a kissing ball to hang next to the door, and a small pot of evergreens for the front steps (I’m new here, and I didn’t want to poke the homeowner’s association. From some of the other units I’ve seen here, I could have gone a bit bigger). My first thought was to get a shot of me coming out the door with the decorations around me, so I put the camera on the tripod, and took some pictures using the remote control.

Well, they certainly weren’t winners. I hadn’t realized how grumpy my normal expression was. Expression aside, which was fixable, I realized I was blocking the wreath, and the other elements weren’t reading well either. So I shot another set of pictures with the phone one evening without me in the picture, but the doorway lit up.

When it came to make the card, I decided to go with one of the straight on shots of the gazebo. It’s not as wide angle as some of the others, and the tree inside is more prominent.

Gazebo, from straight on
The chosen image. Straight on, more or less normal perspective.

Because the lights were LEDs, they had a slightly greenish tint which I didn’t care for. So I took it into Photoshop, masked it so that only gazebo itself was selected, and applied a slight color correction to get rid of the green on the gazebo. I wanted the lights to look warm. On the other hand, I wanted the tree green, so I added another color adjustment layer, for just the tree, to make it greener. I wanted the colored lights on the tree to be more colorful, so I added a Vibrance adjustment layer for the lights.

Finally I wanted a little bit of a glow on the lights, so I duplicated the background layer, blurred it, set the duplicate’s opacity to 63%, and applied a layer mask so the blurriness only appeared over the lights.

Final image
Final image with color adjustments and a slight glow on the lights.

I then switched to Pages. I started by duplicating last year’s card, and replaced the cover image with the new one. Choosing the right font took a while. I wanted a serif font with a small caps style. Pages doesn’t support small caps natively, so I had to fudge it by using two sizes of text. Choosing the color was a bit of a process too. I like to use “Christmassy” colors of red, gold or green for the card text, but with the deep blue of the background, gold didn’t feel right, and the red was OK… but after a couple of cards I decided I wanted more contrast between the dark red and the dark blue, and added a one pixel orangey-red stroke around the letters to make the letters stand out more. I then moved to the inside of the card.

I decided to make the “change of address” notification on the left leaf, and the main card greeting on the right. I placed the picture of the front door in the middle of the left page, and added a note with my new address. For the right side, I used my traditional Christmas greeting.

There was one year when I was able to get the printer to print both sides of the card in one operation, but for the past few years I haven’t been able to get it to do so cleanly, and have had to feed each sheet twice, which is always error prone. This year, I happened to remember there was a setting for printing on thicker stock, tried it and was gratified to see that I was able to print both sides of the card without problems.

Final image - Merry Christmas with picture of gazebo
Cover of the final card.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Uncle Tom

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We got some horrible news today. Uncle Tom died in his sleep last night.

Tom with oak stump

It was quite a shock — Tom always seemed both indefatigable and invincible. When he “retired” to the Cape, it was only a retirement from employment; he was always working hard around the two Cape houses.

Tom was my Dad’s youngest brother, the youngest of nine children. Their own father died while he was quite young, and so he got quite close with his older brothers. Family was very important to him.

He and my mother were very close, dating back to the time when Dad was working nights, Mum was a newlywed, and he’d drop by their apartment on the way home from hockey. He always gave her a preferred spot in the Cape House schedule, valued her opinion, and during her last decline, made a point of making the two hour trip off-Cape to see her.

He took an interest in me. He’s probably the person most responsible for my interest in photography; while he was in Vietnam, he sent back a complete darkroom set. When we were fourteen, he decided to take his two nephews, my cousin Bill and me, with him on a trip to Maryland and DC to visit his fiancee, Susan. Not many guys would have bothered, especially on a trip to see their girlfriend, but Tom did, and we had a great couple of days. We did a whirlwind tour of the capital, taking in the Smithsonian, the Washington Monument, and the Capitol. This was the time of the Watergate hearings, and I distinctly remember Senator Sam Ervin mugging to the gallery.

Tom could be intense, sometimes uncomfortably so. I got the impression he didn’t care for my Elementary Education major (he was right) and wanted me to go for a masters degree. For a while, due to the intensity, I avoided him, but after a while, he either mellowed, or he gave up, or I learned to not to take it personally.

Just as well, because he was a lot of fun to be around. Tom had a great sense of humor, and while we didn’t agree politically, he was always fun to talk to. He was also fun to work with– Tom liked to work and he was good company while doing so. He never talked down or made you feel stupid for not being as adept as he was; he took you as you were and accepted any help you could give.

When Tom had to remove a tree, he didn’t just cut it down. No. That would be too easy. Instead, he would undercut the roots with his beloved Kubota, then drag it out of the ground via main force. As recently as last week, my brother and I were making plans to go down and help him take down a tree.

And that’s one of the things that stings the most about this. All summer, I’ve been wanting and meaning to get down there to say hello. Mum’s illness has left me aware of how fragile health can be, and I’ve been wanting to see Tom while he was still fully himself, but the move took up nearly all my time for several months, and now it’s too late. If there’s a consolation, it’s that he died in his sleep, and didn’t go through a long period of decline. My cousin Mary sent us a picture of him taken just last week, walking his grounds with his dog, and joking about the high astronomical tide giving him “waterfront property”.

Family was important to Tom. He was close to his brother George, helped take care of Grandma, and always spoke highly of my Dad. He and Susan always seemed like a tight couple, and they raised three great children, all three of whom went through the service academies. He and his family were staples at Mum’s Christmas Eve parties, and he will be very sorely missed.

Tom and squirrelTom and MumSusan, Tom, Mum and Anne at Christmas EveMum and Tom at Mum's 80th birthdayTom and granddaughter Aria50 years of the Cape HouseTom and Susan at Chrissy's weddingTom skatingom pushing John Francis around the iceTom and KubotaTom last week

11/11

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Tomorrow is November 11. Mum’s birthday. The first birthday without her.

Mum was very proud of her birth date. When asked for her birthdate, she would just rattle it off. She loved that it was a holiday — for her, growing up, it was Armistice Day, the anniversary of the day fighting stopped in World War I. I’ve read stories of the end of the war, how at the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, the shooting stopped and troops on both sides, cautiously at first, and then joyously, came out of their trenches and embraced their former enemies.

The holiday became Veteran’s Day in 1954, and for a while, it was one of those moveable Monday holidays, but eventually, it returned to November 11th.

As for me, I’ll still be thinking of Mum. We met at the house today to try to figure out what to keep and what to leave for the liquidators. I’d never quite realized what a pack rat she’d become in her later years until I was responsible for dusting all her teapots, and today, going through all her old papers to figure out what to keep and what we could get rid of. She still had old bills from the 1960s in her files.

Birthdays and anniversaries are times for celebrations — until the person you’re celebrating isn’t around anymore. Then they become times to remember. Seems like I’m celebrating less and remembering more as time goes on. Tomorrow, I’ll be remembering Mum.

Six Months

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Today marks six months since Mum died. I’m not sure how I feel about it.

Day to day, I’m mostly OK; just working or hanging around. I seem to be wasting most of my time off just playing game or watching YouTube. I do feel like I’m rattling around in this empty house.

Other times, I find myself really missing her. I went to see Vienna Teng for the first time in years a couple weeks back, and I was afraid I was going to lose it if she sang “The Tower”, because Mum was very much The Tower, “the one who survives by making the lives of others worthwhile”.

Sure enough, she did sing it, and I did get a catch in my throat, when she sang the part “I need not to need/I’ve always been the tower” and remembered how much she hated needing me to help her, after her strokes, but I was able to hold it together and enjoy the rest of the show.

When a sailing ship has to sail against the wind, it can’t do so directly. It has to approach the wind diagonally zig-zag fashion; this is called tacking. Occasionally, if the ship isn’t trimmed right, or if the ship is turned onto the next tack before it has gathered enough speed, it will be “caught in irons,” stuck, with its sails shivering uselessly. The only thing the crew can do is back the sails, get back on the previous tack, gather way, and try again.

I feel like I’ve been caught in irons, and am just starting to make way.

LEDs Redux

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There’s been an noticeable improvement in the quality of LED based Christmas lights this year, They still have the supersaturated blues that the first generation had, but while those had relatively dim yellow and red lights, the newer sets are coming with more and brighter warm colors. With brighter yellows, oranges and reds, I can tolerate the deeply saturated blues.

I went into Boston this evening for the First Night “Pipes and Pops” concert at the Old South Church. I decided to walk through the Common looking for ice sculptures. I found out after the fact that they’d been moved to City Hall Plaza, but I did get to see the city’s official Christmas tree. It was quite nice. It seemed to me that there were a lot more red and warm white lights, and fewer greens and blues. The effect was quite pleasant.

The 2024 Boston Christmas tree.

(The concert was really good too, starting with Copeland’s Fanfare for the Common Man and ending with the Radeztky March.)

Remembrances

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I’d like to post a couple of items here that I created for Mum’s wake and funeral. The first is a video I made for the funeral home; it played during the wake.

I made it via Apple Photos; I have face recognition set up, and I went through the pictures it had tagged as having Mum in them. From there, I added in some slide scans, including a few taken when she was three or four years old. I chose the “Ken Burns Effect” for the transitions; it got me close out of the box, and then I viewed it, and edited the starting and ending zoom and pan for certain images to better suit them. I ended up keeping the default Ken Burns effect music; I’d been thinking I’d use “Firefly” by Over the Rhine, but found that (A), it didn’t match the movement of the slides well, and (B) it was too sad for my frame of mind right then.

The second is the eulogy I read at the funeral. I was fine while I was writing and rehearsing it beforehand, but as soon as we started wheeling the casket down the aisle, I broke down, and really couldn’t hold myself together while reading it. It contains a statement from her brother, who was unable to attend:

Hi. 

Mum would have loved to have seen you all here. She wasn’t morbid, but she did like funerals. 

I remember one time, she’d been to a funeral and was talking about the music she’d heard at dinnertime, and what kind of music she’d like to have for her own. 

It turned into one of those silly dinner-time conversations, and Karen wiped us all out — including Mum — with “How about ‘Ding Dong, The Witch is Dead?‘”

(She got a kick out of it, but for the record, sorry Mum, but we’re not gonna do it.)

The two things that first spring to mind when I think about my mother was her devotion to family, and her strength. 

Mum loved being surrounded by her kids and grandkids. When she went to the Cape, she always wanted to have the kids with her. 

One of Brian’s kids called her “the fun grandmother”, because she liked doing things with them. 

She liked to entertain, but it was almost always for family. Easter dinners, birthday parties, big birthday parties for the whole extended family, and of course, her Christmas Eve parties every year.

It’s appropriate that she died during the Christmas season. 

Mum loved Christmas. She loved riding around looking at the lights, the decorations, the hustle and bustle, the activity. 

She loved giving gifts. 

Every year, she would make dire predictions about how she had to cut back, and that she couldn’t believe how much she was spending on Christmas.

And every year, there was a big stack of presents. 

In hindsight, I don’t think she could help herself — she just loved gift giving, and doing for other people. Any time there was a new baby in the family, she’d send out a package for the baby.

Mum was always the disciplinarian of the family. I’m not sure she actually relished the role, but she never shirked it, and never wanted to dump any problems onto Dad. 

So she was the one who yelled at us, and Dad got to be the good guy… courtesy of Mum.

While she could be very critical of us, she didn’t have self pity. She was widowed young, but she never complained about that. And when she did talk about it, in retrospect, it was more along the lines of “I was widowed, and I had to raise five kids… but I did it.”

And while she could be critical, there was NEVER any doubt that she loved us and would support us. 

Mum liked being in the thick of things. If I was going for a ride up to Rockport, say, or the Seashore Trolley Museum or Nantasket, she’d want to tag along. 

(I never did get her to go along on the motorcycle, though). 

I need to tell you the My Dead Body story. 

Back in my Photo: Hour days, there came a point when I was the only person who could set up our new store in Medford. 

This was well before cell phones. So I couldn’t call to say I’d be late, and I ended up being later than I’d intended.

I’d taken the train in, and the owner promised to get me back to the station. Through a series of disasters, it was about 1:30 in the morning when we got back to the station. 

I was parked on a deserted road near the station, and I was walking back to the car, when I saw headlights. 

Uh-oh. Who was it? 

Was it some teenagers come to find a secluded place to mess around? Was it the police? 

No. It was Mum, with the dog in the back of the car, looking for my dead body. “Get in the car,” she snarled. 

Mum was accustomed to being the strong one.

She much preferred to help US than to have us help HER, and the last few years were galling to her. It embarrassed her to tears when I had to help her get dressed and into bed.

But if anything exemplifies her strong family feelings, it’s the fact that she (and Dad) managed to instill in all of us that family is important, and that we need to support each other. 

The one good thing about these nightmarish last four years, the ONE good thing, is the mutual support my siblings have given to her, and to me. 

People have complimented us about how we’ve taken care of her over these past four years. We had to. It’s what she taught us.

And so, while I’m impossibly sad right now, this is not a tragedy. It’s just time.

I’ve been looking at pictures of her from the past twenty years, and up until the last couple of years, she really did enjoy her life. 

She loved to laugh, and she loved being the center of her family.

Mum’s brother Kip was not able to come, and sent this message:


I’d like to share only a couple things about Darrell, though I could say a lot more and a lot slower in getting it out. 

Darrell was a special sister who was fierce about family. On two occasions she exemplified this. 

When my father remarried, she and Eddie did not hesitate in taking me under their roof so I could be more comfortable. 

Once again I needed their help. 

She and Eddie opened their doors to my family when we were displaced for months due to a fire in our house. Four adults and eight kids in that house on Ponkapoag Way. 

When she and Joanna were having kids, Eddie was working a lot of Sundays. 

So, I would go to Mass with either Joanna or Darrell and the 5, 6, 7, or 8 kids. A woman who often sat behind us eventually asked which lady I was married to and where all the kids came from. We were so close. 

I hope over time I showed that I followed her lead with my family and Darrell’s children who are a gift and for whom I’m forever grateful. 

For over 80 years you have been
more than a big sister to me; you’ve been a friend.

I love you dearly, Darrell, and I’ll miss you so much. 

Thank you all for coming, and thank you for being with us.

Mum, 1937 – 2023

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Mum

My mother died this morning. She was one month past her eighty-sixth birthday.

The two things that first spring to mind when I think about my mother was her devotion to family, and her strength. Mum loved being surrounded by her kids and grandkids.

I remember once, one of her grandkids referred to her as “the fun grandmother” because she liked doing activities with them. She loved playing miniature golf with the kids. Any time she went to the Cape, at least a couple of the kids would go with her.

Family was super important to Mum. She liked to entertain, but it was always for family. Easter dinners, birthday parties, big birthday parties for the whole extended family, and of course, her Christmas Eve parties every year.

It’s appropriate that she died during the Christmas season. Mum loved Christmas. She loved riding around looking at the lights, the hustle and bustle, the activity. She loved giving gifts. Every year, she would make dire predictions about how she had to cut back, and that she couldn’t believe how much she was spending on Christmas, and every year, there was a big stack of presents. In hindsight, I don’t think she could help herself — she just loved gift giving, and doing for other people.

Vienna Teng wrote a song called “The Tower”, about one of her friends, “The one who survives by making the lives / Of others worthwhile”. Mum was the Tower. She was the one people came to for help. She was the one who provided a place to stay (and a hair cut for a job interview) when one of Dad’s brothers needed help. She was the one who took in one of my sister’s former roommates when she was doing an internship nearby. She became the family matriarch who was the center.

Mum loved spending time with her cousins Carol and Julie, and her sister Sandra. Later, she became close to her sisters-in-law, especially Diane, Dot, Anne and Phyllis. She and Dad would double date with Diane and George, and she would often get together with Dot for walks and tea, and several times a year, they would talk a trip out to western Massachusetts to see Phyllis.

Mum spent most of her life in this house, the one she grew up in, aside from a couple of years right after she married, and the last couple of years, when it became impossible for her to remain here. She much preferred to help us, than to have us help her, and the last few years were galling to her, to have us taking care of her, rather than having her take care of us. For some reason, it did not amuse her when I told her, “Payback’s a bitch, Mum”.

But if anything exemplifies her strong family feelings, it’s the fact that she (and Dad) managed to instill in all of their children that family is important, and that we need to support each other. The one good thing about these nightmarish last four years, the ONE thing, is the mutual support my siblings have given to her and to me.

Despite what she used to say (“I’m perfect, just ask me!”) Mum was not perfect. She had a sharp tongue and a quick temper, and did not suffer foolishness gladly. Patience was just something she never had. Never did, and she never developed it when she became ill. But her temper also blew over quickly, and she didn’t hold grudges. While she could be very critical, she never had self pity. No matter how angry she could get, I always felt I could come to her with my problems.

The past four years, and especially the past several months were hard on Mum. For someone who was used to being strong and in control and independent, losing the ability to walk, or rely on help for all the activities of daily life drove her to tears.

And so, while I’m impossibly sad right now, this is not a tragedy. It’s just time. I’ve been looking at pictures of her from the past twenty years, and up until the last couple of years, she really did enjoy her life. She loved to laugh, and she loved being the center of her family.

Updates

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Ten year ago, in “Season of Lights” , I wrote:

Personally, at least for now, I prefer the old-fashioned incandescent types. They seem warmer, with a better distribution of color. The reds and oranges are brighter, the blues less prominent. The newer LED lights seem to be too heavy on the blues. Their blue lamps are quite bright, and  their oranges and reds less bright in comparison. I suspect that this is something that will get fixed in time–the manufacturers need to make light strings where the warmer colors are brighter.

I think the manufacturers are finally starting to get it. I have a couple of strings on my tree that seem a little more well-balanced, and I’m noticing as I drive around town that there are more lights that have the characteristic LED deeply saturated blues, but also have decently bright reds and ambers. And for the first time, it feels to me like old fashioned incandescent lights seem reddish.

I’m also noticing that there are warmer “white” LEDs — the trees in front of the police station are covered with them, though they still seem just a touch greenish.

A few months back I took a ride on the new Green Line extension to Union Square. The new branch to Medford/Tufts opened last week, and I took a ride late Sunday afternoon. Like the Union Square branch, it starts off elevated headed out of Lechmere, then runs at ground level. Unlike the Union Square branch, it goes quite a distance. It’s sort of like the Riverside Line in that it’s fully grade separated with decent spacing between stops; unlike the Riverside Line, there are sound barriers along most of it, which kind of feels like you’re riding in a canyon. And boy, have the walls already been heavily tagged. There seemed a fairly decent ridership for late afternoon on a Sunday.

Photo:Hour

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I realized the other day that it’s been just over forty years since I started my first full time job, at a one hour photo lab called Photo:Hour.

I’d majored in Elementary Education, to be a teacher, right in the middle of the demographic ebb between the end of the Baby Boom and the Boomers starting to have their own children. This I knew going into it. And then, the November I graduated, Proposition 2 1/2 passed, cutting property taxes, and suddenly schools were laying off teachers.

I’d seen an ad for an assistant manager position for a photo lab in January of 1982, and interviewed in the basement office of the Winter Street store with the owner, Tom Giampapa, and then… heard nothing. And then six weeks later, they called. Turns out the guy they’d originally hired had quit. Still being unemployed, I took the job.

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