Dust Jackets

I had the week of Thanksgiving off from work so as a little project I thought I’d give one of my old hardcovers a dust jacket. I have this old first edition (eighth printing) of The Postman Always Rings Twice I bought for a few bucks a number of years back that is coverless. So that became my project.

I googled around to see if I could just find a high-resolution scan to print, but no luck. I did find a facsimile dust jacket for sale for 25 bucks, but that is 5 times what I paid for the book. So that didn’t make much sense to me. The image on that site didn’t really serve to make the cover I needed; the details were too hard to see. So next I found a listing for the book on AbeBooks, a great online bookselling site— like Discogs for books — that contained a couple of photos of the dust jacket.

Using that, I was able to re-create a pretty close, but not exact, duplicate of the dust jacket. I printed it out, cut it out, and wrapped it in mylar and now I have a passable dust jacket for my copy of The Postman Always Rings Twice. Which is pretty fun.

The-Postman-Always-Rings-Twice.pdf

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Cracked Magazine

I was going through my comic collection recently and came across this only Cracked magazine with a collection of t-shirt iron-ons.

Truman

Yesterday, Truman, our beloved cat and the center of our little lives, passed away. He had a bout of seizures two months ago but seemed on the mend, nearly back to his normal and goofy self. Sunday afternoon, he came into the kitchen as Audrey and I were leaving and started having them again. We rushed him to the ER, but they weren’t able to stabilize him. It has been the worst 24 hours of our lives. 

We built our little life around Truman. He anchored it. He was our reason and excuse to come home. He was there, always. 

We have lived with Truman for a third of our lives. His ungraceful, clumsy, and warm presence a constant throughout our post-college adult lives. 

He was born in a barn in Midland, and we drove up to his foster family’s home to pick him up and bring him back with us to Ferndale in November of 2009. He was so little, but he got big, and we loved that about him. He was huge.

Now he is gone. Our house is quiet without him. Not that he was loud; he wasn’t, but it is like our house knows that every creak of the floor or little thump will remind us that he isn’t here to make it. So it won’t make those sounds. Not until we are ready. Which we never will be. 

We buried his ashes behind the back window. Just below where he liked to sleep and watch the birds. I needed him here at home with us, in some way. He was our home, and it is hard to look around it and love it the same way. Really, it was his home. He spent more time here than any of us. 

I’ve mostly worked at home these last two years, and he has been my constant companion, always asleep in the armchair I keep in my room. I’d talk to him 100 times a day. At lunch, I’d protect my lunch from him and inevitably share my lunch with him. He was always with me. 

Right now our house feels hollow, lifeless. I just want him back with us. It wasn’t enough time.

I’m going to miss him forever. 

My First Computer

This was clearly an occasion worthy of capturing on film. We used that printer to print so many birthday banners and holiday cards.

New Font

I made a font.

I was doodling and I started drawing some letters and I just kept going until I had an entire set of uppercase letters. And then, using simple online tools, I took those doodles and made them into a font.

Here is the full set of characters.

Three D Bloody is only available in caps. There are no numerals, special characters, or punctuation. It is an extremely limited font.

If this font would be of any use to you it is available for download below.

Strong Guy Logos

Fort Wayne Detroit

Over the weekend Audrey and I went to Historic Fort Wayne to walk around. There were maybe five other people there, which was great. It was easy to stay far away from everyone. 

I think Fort Wayne might be Audrey’s favorite place in the city. It is a really interesting place that doesn’t get much attention. The main fort was closed, so we couldn’t walk around the in the cool tunnel/fort, but the grounds were open. There are many other structures on the grounds, old barracks, an old theater, hospital and other assorted abandoned military buildings. Most of it is in pretty terrible shape and many of the buildings are completely falling apart. It is a great place to take photos.

While we were walking around, I shot a roll and a half of film through my Olympus PEN FT. The half roll was some Kodak Gold 200, which I haven’t developed yet. The whole roll was some black-and-white Ultrafine Extreme 100, a 100 ASA film. A few weeks back I bought a 100’ roll of it to bulk load. For the last year or so, I’ve been shooting mostly 400-speed Arista EDU film, which is pretty heavy on grain. The PEN is already a pretty grainy camera because the negative is so small. I also usually develop in Rodinal, which is a fairly grainy developer. So, I thought for my next batch of film it might be nice to try something with finer grain. I also switched to a slightly finer grain developer, Kodak D76, for this roll. These shots are smoother than what I’m used to seeing with Arista EDU 400. I also metered a little differently than I typically do, overexposing by a stop or so to try to get more detail in the shadows. I’ve got over a dozen more rolls of Ultra Fine Extreme 100 in my film fridge, so I’ve got plenty to experiment with.

Detroit is a city filled with abandoned, falling-down buildings. They can be very beautiful. But I have an ethical problem with suburbanites, like myself, coming into town and photographing the “ruins.” It feels like exploitation. Anyone who comes to town and photographs a bunch of abandoned structures and then goes home and does not have to face the day-to-day realities of those buildings, and the circumstances and systems that created them, seems to be on some ethically rocky ground. They aren’t tourist attractions. But the structures on the grounds of Fort Wayne weren’t private residences or businesses; they are military buildings on government land. And now they are literally a tourist attraction. They are military ruins; I felt okay photographing them.

Anyhow this is only the second place we have gone during the entire pandemic. It was nice to go somewhere, almost like things were normal. Almost.

https://www.historicfortwaynecoalition.com/

Baseball in the Age of Social Distancing

I took this photo of Austin Jackson practicing social distancing in the Comerica Park outfield way back in 2013. I was really obsessed with baseball that year. I’ve lost my fanaticism for baseball but I’m still a casual fan. I’ve enjoyed the 5 or so games I’ve watched so far this season.