Anniversary

Wedding Day, 7 August 1982

Is there a name for an anniversary that is no longer celebrated?

Today, while tending to my routine of posting deck logs to a Facebook group dedicated to the history of the USS Zircon (PY-16), one of the two ships my dad served on during World War II, I naturally had to look at the date on the log sheet. While the year was 1942, the day was the 7th of August, the date on which I would get married forty years later.

When I recall that day, my mind often refers back to the photographs that my then-bride Penny's sister Paula took using my Nikkormat FTN 35mm camera. The above photo is one that often sticks in my memory as it's one that years later—at the time we were going through our split up—Penny would point to (literally or figuratively, I can't recall) as proof that I didn't want to be married, or words to that effect. And because I am nothing if not a rehasher of the past, I've often thought about those remarks, picture or no picture.

Of course, those words, on their face, are not true. I did want to be married to her. But I just didn't know what that meant. At just over three years, our relationship had been my longest to date, and for most of that time we lived a little over two hours apart—I in Bowling Green, Ohio, and she in Lansing, Michigan. I lived with her for about three weeks while I commuted back and forth to Jackson, Michigan for a job I had as part of an internship, but by and large, we didn't spend a whole lot of time together until after I'd graduated. I recall living with her for a spell in which I took a piddly job with some kind of mail-order operation that didn't last long, but I eventually went back to Toledo to work with Lane Drug, a pharmacy-convenience store which had stores throughout northwestern Ohio, and owned an East Coast company, Peoples Drug, which was fairly massive.

While the relationship seemed to be heading toward marriage, we didn't talk about it much. As best as I can recall, we didn't talk about our aspirations as regards children or career goals, but we seemed compatible in so many ways. Penny's folks approved of me, and I got along well with her siblings. Her mom had been adopted as a young girl, and Penny had a pretty close relationship with her mom's adoptive parents, especially her grandmother, Laverne. If memory serves, sometime in 1981 Laverne took a fall or two and—as seems to be typical in such cases—developed pneumonia and/or other complications. During this time, Penny brought up marriage; she wanted to tell Laverne that we were getting married. It wasn't a proposal per se, it was more like a strong suggestion, but of course, I agreed. Laverne would die in September of that year.

We agreed that the wedding would be a simple one, and the plan was to hold it on the front lawn at her parents house just outside Laingsburg, Michigan proper. Penny had great affection for the large tree just outside the front door of the house, and that's where she wanted the ceremony to take place. We agreed to invite a very limited number of guests, which would bend the noses of a few of her life-long friends, but neither of us were big-time partiers, so something low-key was best served by inviting fewer than seventy people.

As I was in Ohio for most of the year leading up to the event, Penny took care of most of the details. She designed the invitations and had them printed, she made her own dress, she had the rings of silver made by a local artist. I think her dad took care of procuring a canopy or two to cover the food. My biggest contribution besides saying "OK" a lot was probably putting together the mix tape (which kicked off with this), and—on the day of the wedding—running speaker wire from her parents' living room to the outdoors and mounting speakers on the house's exterior. I also brought the camera and film for the pictures.

The pictures.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that most marriages are a first time occasion for the couples involved. Getting married was absolutely new to me, but also, I have to admit, was making public displays of affection. On this particular day, I had no clue about what to do with my hands or my body. Why didn't I take Penny's hand? you might ask. Yeah, I wonder about that, too. Why didn't I stand closer to her? I have no answer, really, other than that maybe... MAYbe it had something to do with the fact that in all the weddings I'd ever seen, the couples actually only unite once the vows are spoken. I'm kind of grasping at straws, because I was totally enamoured with Penny and thrilled that I was the lucky one to be standing so awkwardly to her right.

Ultimately, though, the marriage didn't work out. I honestly feel as though Penny was ready to call it quits not long after our son Zachary was born in February of 1985. I was so ill-prepared to be a good husband or partner. For one, I spent more time at work than I did at home. Not because the job meant more to me than she did—far from it—I was just not good at what I was supposed to be doing, and I lived in constant fear of losing the job and the relatively good income that supported us. It was something that I kept to myself when I came home, as I wanted neither to burden her with my crap nor to admit to my weakness. A guy thing, I guess. This went on year after year after year until it came to a head ten years later and I felt compelled to resign. Whatever fine, scintilla of a thread that might have been holding the marriage together snapped that day. Yes, there was so much more to it than that, but that was a huge factor, and one which I think led to everything else.

We've now been divorced for over twice as long as we were married. It took a while but for several years now, the 7th of August has passed without notice (as has 22 June, the date we met), but as I still have four years worth of deck logs to post at Facebook, it'll probably be at least that long before the date doesn't bring back the best of the memories from that day and those times.

Penny and Me

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Exploitive A.I. Slop

I got blocked by a Facebook page called Historic Voices last night because I called it out for its exploitive use of A.I.-generated images to evoke emotional responses and hence create engagement (read: monetization).

I had come across this image—complete with fake dust artifacts—on a friend's Facebook page via my feed...

Exploitive A.I. Slop from Facebook page Historic Voices

...which is accompanied by this text:

The Bread Was Still Warm — Mauthausen, Austria, 1945

As American troops stormed the gates of Mauthausen concentration camp in May 1945, they were met with silence—followed by the slow, trembling steps of starving prisoners emerging from the shadows. Among the supplies brought in was freshly baked bread. One survivor, skeletal and barely able to stand, took a piece into his hands and began to cry. Not because he was starving—though he was—but because the bread was still warm. "I forgot what warmth felt like," he whispered, "in hands or food."

That single moment—one man holding bread like it was life itself—was captured in a haunting photograph and sent home. It became a symbol of both suffering and survival, a reminder that sometimes, hope returns in the smallest of gestures. For many, that warm loaf wasn’t just food—it was the first sign that the nightmare was ending.

The page, of course, is full of these bullshit narratives, many of which—like the example above—suggest that the image is an actual photograph. The intent, of course, is to pull on the heart strings of people for the purpose of engagement, and it is remarkable how many people fall for this exploitive bullshit because... I don't know... they want to show that they're sensitive to Nazi war crimes? As of this writing, the image has over 46,000 reactions, 3800 comments, and 10,000 shares. One such comment:

Thank you for sharing such an incredible story and photo. My husband bakes bread and has found that fresh bread is one of the most emotionally intense experiences.

Another image, albeit this time without dust artifact...

Exploitive A.I. Slop from Facebook page Historic Voices

Note how there are no other human beings in the "photo" which ostensibly was "taken" while "American troops stormed the gates" to liberate the place. It looks like there's a whole lot of storming going on!

The bullshit text:

He Hugged the Fence Goodbye — Dachau, Germany, 1945

A young American soldier named Thomas Ray entered Dachau during its liberation and saw an emaciated man crawling toward the electrified fence. Thinking he was trying to die, Thomas ran to stop him—but the man simply embraced the cold wire and kissed it.

He turned and said, "I waited three years to say goodbye to this cage. Now I leave with my soul." Thomas wrote home that night, "I’ve seen freedom reborn through tears."

Comments:

• Probably lost his entire family 💔
• God bless his soul
• God Bless you 🙏 Both
• I pray he lived a long healthy happy life!

A second Facebook post—with basically the same narrative, but with a different image, and one in which the supposed American soldier, Thomas Ray, looks like a completely different person—popped up on the page as I was writing this.

Exploitive A.I. Slop from Facebook page Historic Voices

The text, modified a bit:

He Hugged the Fence Goodbye — Dachau, Germany, 1945

When American troops entered Dachau, young soldier Thomas Ray saw an emaciated prisoner crawl toward the electrified fence. Fearing the man meant to end his life, Thomas rushed forward—but instead watched him gently embrace the cold wire and kiss it. The man turned and said, "I waited three years to say goodbye to this cage. Now I leave with my soul."

That moment seared itself into Thomas’s memory. He wrote home that night: "I've never seen someone freer than him." In a place built to crush human dignity, a simple farewell to the fence became an act of spiritual liberation—proof that even after unspeakable suffering, the soul could still stand up and walk out.

One more, also with fake dust artifact...

Exploitive A.I. Slop from Facebook page Historic Voices

The bullshit text:

Dachau, Germany, 1945 – The Singing Man

In the last days before liberation, prisoners at Dachau described an older man who sang quietly every night.

He had no family left, no voice left, but still hummed old Yiddish lullabies. One survivor later said, "He sang so the silence wouldn't win."

His name was never known. But survivors say they still remember the tune — and still hum it, softly, when they need to feel human.

Comments:

• A truly wonderful human being! All so tragic!
• Your a hero
• Rest in peace you were certainly a gift from God
• Kept him sane enough each day

I found something interesting when I took a look at the page's About section (click to enlarge).

About page for Facebook's Historic Voices

The page used to be called Floral Fantasies, which is rather curious. I wonder if the page got hacked and was taken over by someone who knew they could boondoggle people with fake historical narratives, or if the Floral Fantasies thing wasn't getting the traffic or engagement originally hoped for or expected.

I honestly don't know how people can be so fucking gullible and malleable. First of all, and I suppose it's because I'm a photographer that I notice such things, but photographs taken in 1945 on the films available at that time, would be grainy as hell, especially if they had been taken with a 35mm camera, which in all likelihood, is what a World War II soldier would have been carrying, if he had a camera at all.

This is not the only group that this person or persons has created to spread the A.I. slop. Another is called Historical Life, and I'm pretty certain I've seen another one out there, one which I might have blocked myself already. I've also seen a number of pages dedicated to spreading false stories about athletes donating millions of dollars to individuals or causes. The posts often feature images of the athletes hugging people who are shedding tears of happiness.

There is no doubt that A.I. is here to stay. I'm certain that I unwittingly use it regularly each day when I open Photoshop. There are so many features within Photoshop that are probably built around the technology that I can't help but use it. That said, I have been avoiding it whenever I can. When I do web searches, for example, I include "-ai" along with the search terms. I'm not positive that that is a cure, but when I've done it, the A.I.-generated summaries disappear, so I assume that the function is skirted. I just searched ways to turn off A.I. in searches, and found this site, which has all kinds of suggestions, many of which are browser-specific.

Getting back to the impetus for this post, though, A.I. is turning Facebook into an even worse hellsite than it was just a couple of years ago, with unnecessary A.I.-generated garbage proliferating faster than I can block the sources. And since the crap is getting shared thousands and thousands of times each day, it's getting harder and harder to not have it sully my feed. How did a site ostensibly designed for people to stay in touch become such a hellscape of bullshit? That's rhetorical, by the way. The answer is that it's run by an evil, malicious prick.

 

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A Farewell to Bill Moyers

Bill Moyers by Robin Holland

When I think of the development of my political ideologies, I pretty much tie it to having grown up during the liberal presidencies of Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon B. Johnson, the Civil Rights movement led by Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Presidential candidacies of Bobby Kennedy and George McGovern. But little would I have known back then that behind the scenes were the likes of Ted Sorenson, advisor and speechwriter to JFK, and Bill Moyers, who pulled the same duty for LBJ.

Bill Moyers died today, and I feel as though we've lost a giant. When he left politics as a full-time job, he took a bit of a sideways step into journalism, which is how I learned of him. While he would regularly give reports during the news, I primarily knew of him by way of his commentary which was a regular segment of the CBS Evening News.

On 8 December 1982, I was living in a tiny house on the corner of West Northgate Parkway and Bennett Road in Toledo, Ohio with my then-wife, Penny, and our cat, Cat. That day, Norman Mayer drove a utility van up a sidewalk leading to the Washington Monument and—claiming it was full of explosives—threatened to blow it up. He was protesting the nuclear arms build-up the only way he apparently knew how to, and maintained a standoff with law enforcement for the better part of the day. It got him killed. His threat, of course, was as empty as the the van was later found to be.

The following night, Moyers' segment was introduced by Dan Rather and he proceeded to deliver one of the most brilliant and memorable essays I've ever heard, one which has been etched in my brain ever since.

Maybe Norman Mayer never had a chance to be heard, given his criminal record: his arrests for drug dealing, assault and battery. Maybe he became a criminal because he couldn't be heard. We'll never know, and it doesn't really matter. What matters is that he wanted to tell us that humanity is drifting toward nuclear war. Perhaps this is a cry only lunatics and outlaws can hear. It would not be the first time truth had failed to get the establishment to listen, or the foolish had been chosen to confound the wise.

The wise yesterday were rattling their sabers in Moscow, or putting the finishing touches in the House of Representatives on a military budget of $231 billion for the coming year—$231 billion, including over $2 billion to continue research on the MX missile they had symbolically voted against the day before.

This is the wisdom of the world which proved too much for Norman Mayer, who wanted only to stop the arms race. Once you realize the futility of your cause, you can choose to live as a zombie, a martyr, a cynic or a saint—or today, a video terrorist. Norman Mayer chose to go out that way. It doesn't appear he really had the stomach for it. Those detonators had nothing to detonate. So he played Atari on the monument grounds and died when the game was over. Lunacy? Yes, but it is the lunacy of nations today who hold the world hostage, as he did Washington, with the threat of violence for the sake of peace. This sad little man had the superpowers for a role model. He died unheeded by them, but the star of his own television special. Such was the final lunacy. His pathetic charade received far more time from the media than we'll give the dialogue on nuclear issues which he was crazy enough to think we might honor.

Not much has really changed with this world in the last forty-three years as our military spending continues to rise with no compulsion on the part of our legislators to rein it in and put the money to better use than dropping billions of dollars of ultimately ineffective bombs on Iran. Day by day we step further and further away from anything even resembling sanity. And as shitty a place as this world is right now, it just got a little bit shittier.

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Worlds Colliding

These days, I spend most of my time on four research projects. I bounce from one to the next without much rhyme or reason, although I have to admit that for the last year or so, I've forsaken a couple of them. Three of the projects (two of which intermingle somewhat) are related to my dad's naval service during World War II, while the fourth is about the sixty-eight people with whom my mom graduated 8th Grade in the Bronx in 1940.

One of the projects, and probably the most massive of the bunch, involves researching all the men who served aboard the USS Zircon (PY-16). The initial scope of that project was very narrow, but the more I learned about the ship and its men, my interests fanned out into something way bigger. Probably too big. Nonetheless, I persist.

Out of the blue recently, I received an email from someone inquiring about one of the sailors of the Zircon, Stanley David Simon, who was the Medical Officer aboard the ship when my dad was one of its crew. Along with Dad, he was one of the key figures during the USS YF-415 disaster, treating the men rescued during that ordeal. In the initial days of my research ten years or so ago, I got in touch by email with Simon's children, and they shared some stories, but since then, I've not spent much time working on his story, so this inquiry nudged me to get back to him.

Simon went to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and graduated in 1937. There is a 1937 Cornellian, the school's student yearbook, available at Ancestry to peruse, and as I was flipping through the pages to find Simon's Senior portrait, another portrait and profile caught my eye, that of Henry Arnold Page, Jr., who just so happened to be from my hometown of Toledo, Ohio.

Because I am nothing if not curious, I did a newspaper search in the Toledo newspaper (The Blade) to see what might have become of him, and I found this mention of his impending degree at Cornell.

And what caught my eye about the article was that it included yet another Toledoan who was graduating from Cornell—Franklin Smith Macomber.

If you lived for any length of time in Toledo between 1938 and 1991, you would have heard the name Macomber. It was the name of the vocational high school in the city, its proper name being Irving E. Macomber Vocational Technical High School, and named for Irving Emerson Macomber, who died in June of 1935. According to Wikipedia, Macomber helped develop Toledo's schools and parks, and once lived on the property upon which the school was built. And... he was Franklin Smith Macomber's father. Also of note, one of Macomber's pallbearers was Wayne M. Canaday, President and Chairman of Willy-Overland Motors, Inc., which developed and produced the military jeep during World War II.

Beyond having friends who went to Macomber, I'd never given the place—much less its namesake—much thought. And because this post is about worlds colliding, my dad briefly attended Macomber before joining the Merchant Marines.

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Retouched

Retouching Dad ©2024 Patrick T. Power

NOTE: I've decided to abandon my Substack account because of that platform's decision to create a partnership with right-winger Bari Weiss's organization. I will migrate what few posts I've published there to this site. This post was originally published on 27 May 2024. I've since done some minor editing

Today we in the United States observe Memorial Day. It is also the thirty-second anniversary of my dad's death, so I'm veering a bit from writing about my own photographs.

Eleven years ago, I scanned virtually all of the old photographs I somehow managed to wriggle away from my mom years before, and at the time, this one struck me as one I'd either not seen or—more likely—hadn't paid much attention to. My guess is that it was taken sometime in the late 1940s—before I was born—and almost certainly in Staten Island, New York, where my parents had met during World War II, married (in 1945), and lived for several years before moving to Toledo, Ohio, where Dad had grown up. The cigarette in his hand was likely a Lucky Strike.

I didn't have a particularly close relationship with Dad. He was of the authoritarian ilk when I was growing up, so I paid more respect to his temper than I did to him, but he mellowed quite a bit after his youngest son Jim (I was the third of four¹) got into high school. Since his death, I have given a lot of thought to him, our relationship, and his life, which I honestly know so little about because he didn't talk all that much about it. Nor did my brothers and I prod him very much. I've written a lot about Dad over the course of the last twenty years, some of which has gotten people riled because despite that he was far and away a good person, he wasn't a saint, but it's worth remembering the bad stuff, too, in order to better appreciate the good stuff. I'm not going to rehash (much) my earlier writings, mostly just tell a few facts as I know them. I'll edit this if corrections or clarifications roll in.

Born in Chicago, Illinois on 29 January 1921 to Robert Elay Power and Olive Belle Cullison, Dad grew up in a fairly large family.

Grandma and her children

He had three brothers² and five sisters, with sixteen years separating them. Clara was the oldest, then came Georgetta, Dad, Rob, Virginia, Gertrude, Mary Belle, Lloyd, and Richard. His father—like my mom's mother—died before I was born. His mother had so many grandkids—sixteen—while I was growing up that I barely knew her nor she me.³ She lived with Mary Belle and her family, so most of our family gatherings would take place at their home, first on Pool Street in Toledo, and later "out in the country" on Curtice Road in Northwood. Grandma had grown up in Indiana and moved around a bit with her husband, who had been born either in Kentucky or Mount Vernon, Ohio depending upon which document you want to believe. Her kids were born in various locales in Indiana (Clara, Geor, Mary Belle, Lloyd), Illinois (Dad, Vir, Rob), Minnesota (Gert), and Toledo (Richard), where the family eventually settled. Just about the only thing I knew about Dad's dad was that he made candy.

What I know about my dad, though, was mostly learned from observation and experience. Although I don't believe he lived very long in Chicago, he was a White Sox fan his entire life going forward. There was little else I knew about his connection with the place, except that Rob, too, was born in or near Chicago. He played baseball and softball until he moved back to Toledo after getting married, and for a little while after that, but I never saw him play. He swung a bat left-handed while throwing right-handed (as did my younger brother Jim, whether by DNA or by emulation). We occasionally played catch in the backyard, but about the only advice I'd gotten from him that I recall was more of an admonishment for trying to throw curve balls.

Dad and team, circa 1946 to 1950

He never told stories about playing ball, although Mom told one in which he was on second base in a game when Rob came to bat. Rob got a hit and as Dad was rounding third base he slipped and fell at the same time Rob slipped and fell rounding first base. I can imagine Mom laughing at it and him being pissed off that she found it funny. At a gathering at the funeral home the night before his funeral mass and burial, the priest asked if anyone wanted to speak up about Dad, and after a silence of about ten seconds, his brother and best friend Rob stood up and claimed, "I was the better ball player!" getting the last word in on what was no doubt a long-running light-hearted debate.

Dad and Rob, circa 1973

Before enlisting in the Navy, and before meeting Mom, dad had joined the Merchant Marines, and he had to have been stationed on the east coast at the time as he enlisted in the Navy in New York. I have photos of him in his Navy blues that were taken on his wedding day—one of the few clues that he was in the Navy because, again, he never talked about his past. He occasionally mentioned little bits of biographical information, such as having attended Raymer Elementary School and, briefly, Macomber High School, but beyond that, not much—at least not to me.

He golfed. A lot. And, of course, he swung from the left side. He would golf nearly every Saturday and Sunday from early spring to late autumn, and I accompanied him but a couple of times to carry his bag. Only once did I golf with him, a day made even more memorable because one of our foursome, Rick Mitchell (Jim being the fourth), was hit on the head by a golf ball on the first green just as he missed a four- or five-foot putt. We all thought he was screwing around when he fell to the ground—an overly dramatic reaction to having missed the putt—only to find that he'd been knocked momentarily unconscious.

Dad worked as a refrigeration mechanic for Coca-Cola for twenty years of his life, and did a little freelance work at the same time (J. Power Service, Mom kept his books). Prior to that he'd worked on the railroad and at a Pure oil refinery, and possibly for a butcher before the Merchant Marines and the Navy. A butcher, Harry Gottesman, is listed as a reference on Dad's enlistment application but I doubt I'll ever know for sure if he worked for him. His work for Coke meant we drank a lot of Coke and Sprite (his preference) and Tab over the course of twenty years. It also meant frequent family trips to Inky's Italian restaurant not far from the Coke plant, as he provided service for their Coke machines and had developed a friendship with the proprietor, Frank Incorvaia, with whom he would become golf buddies. My first experience with tipping came at Inky's, when as we were getting up to leave one time, I noticed Dad had left money lying on the table. I grabbed it and gave it to him telling him he'd forgotten it.

Dad didn't read a lot, but I do recall he read the occasional Louis L'Amour novel and, I'm pretty sure, Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee, which seemed to sit on the bookshelf in our house for ages. He developed an affinity for the western United States, I think, after having worked either for the Civilian Conservation Corps or possibly the National Youth Administration before joining the Merchant Marines. But again, not having spoken to him about this stuff, I can only guess that happened when he was 18 or so. Jim says that he talked to him about it and that Dad and Rob were teens "14 15 or 16" but that seems pretty young to me. Dad was eighteen months older than Rob, so maybe Rob was 16.

I have photographs from trips Dad took to Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, Colorado, and Nevada, North Dakota… all with dates on them from 1986 to 1989 but I'm at a loss as to details. I recall clearly that he went with Rob once because they talked of driving with the windows up on hot days because open windows equaled lower gas mileage (that's what I recall anyway). This one I'm quite sure was taken right about here at Lake Lowell, just a little west of Boise, Idaho, but there's no date on the back of the print, so I don't know if it's from the trip with Rob or one (or more) that he took with my mom. One photo is of her sitting on this wall, but it's in black and white.

Dad at Lake Lowell

Whichever trip it was, that he made this detour from the main road suggests to me that he might have worked on the Deer Flat Embankments project. The date on the below cobblestone masonry corner post in a photo he took coincides with Dad being 18, so maybe.

1939 | CCC

Several times when I was a kid, Dad would make cartoon-like sketches, typically on scrap paper or the backs of envelopes, and talk about once being a pretty good artist. For the longest time, a framed coloured sketch he'd created of a duckling hung on our bedroom wall just below a light stanchion. Maybe he'd done it around the time one of us was born? I'm pretty sure it preceded me. Of course, I never asked about it. I don't know if it survived after Mom's eventual sale of the house.

But just before he retired from Coke, and while my then-wife Penny and I were still living in Toledo, he took up painting. Penny is a fantastic artist, and I wouldn't be surprised if Dad had made similar remarks to her about his potential as an artist and she said, "Do it, John!" and encouraged him. With my departure from the house in 1982, my room (the back bedroom, as it was known… an addition to the house prior to my arrival) would be used as his painting studio. At first, Dad's life transition was a bit humourous… the whole idea of "his studio"… because… Dad.

It took a while for him to get the hang of things, but Penny gave him guidance whenever she had the opportunity. She bought him a subscription to a painting magazine, suggested and probably bought him supplies. What he lacked in skill at the beginning, he made up for in enthusiasm. He was determined, and when he retired from Coke in March of 1986, it became his full-time gig, and his technique got better with each painting, most of which were landscapes.

One of Dad's paintings

I either bought or recommended a camera (Pentax K-1000) for him for Christmas one year so that he could take photographs for reference. One weekend in 1990, I think, while I was working for Michigan State University, I borrowed my department's Fuji Pan 617 (6cm x 17cm) panoramic camera and brought it to Toledo, and Dad and I spent a day together taking pictures along the Maumee River from Toledo to Sidecut Park in Maumee, probably the only day we'd ever spent together alone.

When he died on Wednesday, 27 May 1992, it had come after a rollercoaster week of good days and bad days, with the doctors seeming to struggle with what was going on with him. It could go on for days or weeks, they said, or months. It turned out to be days.

When Mom and my brothers and I met with the priest the day before his funeral, Mom pulled out a letter from the Navy that none of us had seen before. It was a citation signed by the Commander-in-Chief of the North Atlantic Fleet for an incident that occurred on 11 May 1944 just outside Boston Harbor, an incident during which he helped to save the lives of fourteen men from a burning, exploding, and ultimately sinking yard freighter. I recall Mom years before having alluded once to Dad pulling men out of the water but she gave no details, no description of what Dad actually would have experienced. It wasn't until the 70th anniversary of that incident that I got serious about learning what happened that day.

Dad never talked about it. He had talked about it with Mom's brother Skip way back when, and only recently did I learn that he talked about it one day with Jim's wife, Chris, when she stopped at the house for lunch one day while delivering mail in the neighbourhood.

It pains me that I didn't know the man all that well. It pains me that our relationship was contentious enough for so many years (I was the long-haired, free-thinking hippy of the family… I still am, I guess, but with much shorter, thinning grey hair) that heart-to-heart discussions weren't possible. As I noted, he'd mellowed once Jim was in high school. He was and is Jim's hero. "The greatest man that ever lived."

I wouldn't, for the life of me, try to take that away from him. But the more that I have thought about Dad since his death, and the more I have thought about my family, it's clear to me that we live so many lives within our "one and only life." The father that I knew before Jim came along or came of age was a different man than he knew. He was a different man than my older brothers Bob and Mike knew. He changed in ways I wouldn't have expected: quitting cigarettes (and cigars and pipes), for example; attending church weekly and eventually getting baptized Catholic. His worst aspects, for the most part, melted away as his children began to have children.

As humble a man as I believe my dad to have been, I also know that the incident for which he received his citation and medal⁴ occurred eleven years before I was born. It would be another ten years before I would be anything approaching conversational, which meant twenty-one years would have passed—ancient history for Dad… why would he care to talk about something that happened so long ago?

I've gone on too long, yet not really enough, I suppose, and I know I've meandered a bit, but I started this with a picture—the triptych of a 1940s picture of my dad, remember?

Eleven years ago, as I worked away at that image file, slowly, patiently, meticulously getting rid of as many imperfections to the image as I could find, it occurred to me that that is what we often do when it comes to the memory of those we lose once we've grown old enough to realize that it's not easy being a human being. Our parents' flaws, which we experience in our pre-adult years, become less important to us. We might not totally forget, we might not totally forgive, but we touch up the rips and folds and stains and wrinkles, and gloss them over so that the picture looks at least less flawed.

I miss Dad, but sometimes I think I miss him more for the relationship we could have had or should have had rather than for the one that we did have.

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¹Mom delivered a still born three years after I was born, a year before Jim came along. [back]

²Dad's mom's first child was a stillborn girl; his brother Lloyd died at little more than two months old. [back]

³Grandma babysat for me and Jim one time while Mom and Dad were in New York for Mom's brother's wedding. When they returned, Grandma told them, "Never again!" I have no clue as to why that was the case, unless Jim and I fought or argued a lot, which I don't recall. All I can recall of that occasion is that my older brother Mike got to stay with Dad's sister Mary Belle's family, with whom grandma lived, and I rode my bike there (a little under two miles) because I'd felt a little left out and wanted to hang out with my big brother. [back]

⁴In addition to the citation, Dad was awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal, the highest award a sailor could receive for valour in a non-combat situation. [back]

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Tintype-y

From My Window — ©2025 Patrick T. Power

Several years ago, I bought a refurbished iPhone 7 off eBay as I was a little disappointed in the image quality of the Samsung phone (Galaxy S III, I think?) I was using at the time. It didn't really turn out to be much—if at all—better, so I put it away, essentially not to be used except for doing Facetime with my granddaughter. Its battery life is extremely short, so it made little sense to make it my primary mobile picture taker anyway.

At some point, I got curious about whether or not the Hipstamatic app was still available as many of the images people posted back in the early days of Instagram were created with Hipstamatic. In fact, it was one of the major factors behind using Instagram in the first place—there were so many cool and funky looking photographs. Alas, Hipstamatic was not available for Android phones, so I downloaded Retro Camera, which sort of had some cool effects, but they didn't quite do it for me.

But I digress...

In searching for Hipstamatic in the Apple Store, I came across TinType, an app which gives photographs a vintage, tintype look. Not long after I moved to San Francisco, a photographic store and gallery, Photobooth, opened on Valencia Street in the Mission, and in the middle of the space, a tinype portrait studio was set up. I attended a few photo exhibitions there and saw portraits being taken as I milled about looking at the photographs. The set-up, as I recall, required pretty intense lighting (in this instance, I think the lights were strobes) due to the film's (actually, a light-sensitive emulsion-coated metal plate) low response to light. Also required was a wide-open (or near wide-open) lens aperture which reduced the recorded image's depth-of-field severely—mostly only to about an inch or two. It rendered very cool portraits. I was disappointed when the place closed.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when I recalled that I had the TinType app on the phone. Because historically, tinypes have been preponderantly used for portraits, I thought I could use this faux version of it for photographs around the city since I have little interest in doing self-portraits these days. That said...


Tintype-y Me — ©2025 Patrick T. Power

Thursday night, I had a job across the street from the Transamerica pyramid, and just before checking in with my client, I hopped across Montgomery Street to take some photos of the pyramid. Because I was so close to it, and because I wanted to include Montgomery Street and Clay Street in the final frame, I did a six-frame panorama in the light drizzle and grey of the early evening.


Transamerica — ©2025 Patrick T. Power

After the job, I headed home in a slightly heavier drizzle with a wind heavy enough I didn't bother to open my umbrella figuring it would be useless. As I crossed California Street; I saw a lone woman in the distance walking towards me with her umbrella up. She was sticking somewhat close to the pillared structure at 300 Montgomery, and I saw potential, so I lifted my phone and took a couple of frames, only to decide I wanted to get closer so that a street sign wasn't in the frame. As I waited for her to get closer, I heard a couple coming up from behind me and I absolutely did not want them to walk into the frame to ruin things, so I hurriedly took the photo. Thankfully, the TinType processing hides the blurriness.


Montgomery Street — ©2025 Patrick T. Power

I really would have preferred to wait another split-second for her to take one more step to get fully in front of that pillar, but that couple!

It was sunny on Saturday, so I took a bike ride to Fisherman's Wharf. I've imagined photographing a number of the more landmark-y aspects of the city and running through the application, but the SkyStar Ferris Wheel appealed to me as well. I did a semi-circular tour of the wheel to see what angle might work best, and I ended up on the opposite side of the wheel from the sun. Typically, I don't like pointing the cellphone (most often my camera of choice these days) into direct sunlight as it usually results in beaucoup flare, but I moved to where the sun was hidden by the frame and spokes of the wheel. I was particularly excited about the long shadows that splayed out towards me, so after taking a frame or two of about half the wheel plus the shadows, I took six frames to create a panoramic image when I got home. Of course, I had no clue as to whether or not the panorama would turn out, but I was delightfully surprised with the stitched image. I was lucky that the wheel was loading/unloading at the time I was doing this, so I was able to get the six frames clicked off without the wheel rotating at all. The TinType processing helped to make a lot of the details of the scene unrecognizable, giving the image the timeless, vintage look I was hoping for.


SkyStar Wheel — ©2025 Patrick T. Power

I spent most of Sunday working on my photographs from the Thursday night job as I wanted to have them uploaded for the client by Monday morning. I also watched most of the Super Bowl game, so I wasn't able to get out to take any photographs until about 8:00 PM. Despite that I knew there'd be few people out and about, I decided to go to Union Square to get the Dewey Monument rising up into the darkness. I did that, but my favourite for the night came as I was headed back to Powell Station to catch the train home. I've long loved the Elkan Gunst Building at the southwest corner of Geary and Powell, so I paused to get that, waiting what seemed like an eternity for all traffic to clear. There is a heart sculture on each of the four corners of Union Square, so one is in the frame, and I got lucky that a person (actually two) walked into the center of the frame.


Geary — ©2025 Patrick T. Power

A friend back in Michigan has been doing actual tintype photography for a number of years. But as someone who basically has lived hand to mouth for thirty years, I'm OK with using a phone app, as I have neither the space nor the cash required for doing the real thing. Ultimately, though, it's the image that counts, and while I wish I had more control over certain aspects of the app, it's keeping my pursuit of at taking at least one photograph a day interesting for me. I have been posting them at Flickr in a set called Faux Tintypes (and another called Tintype San Francisco, which is mostly—but not entirely—redundant) so as not to try to fool anyone that they're the real thing. I've also tagged each of them with "faux tintype"—again... I want to be clear with what's going on.


F Market — ©2025 Patrick T. Power

In my mind, it makes for a more interesting photograph—or digital image—whatever you want to call it. Especially for someone who has been walking around San Francisco for fifteen years and seeing many of the same things over and over again. This process allows me to see them in a different way.

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My Baseball Career

Or Accepting My Mediocrity

NOTE: I've decided to abandon my Substack account because of that platform's decision to create a partnership with right-winger Bari Weiss's organization. I will migrate what few posts I've published there to this site. This post was originally published on 13 July 2024. I've since done some minor editing

Me on deck, July 1967, Ravine Park

There was a time when baseball meant everything to me. I think that if ever I had a dream in life, it was to play in the Major Leagues. And actually, I don't know that I would even call it a dream so much as I figured it was an inevitability.

And I say that not so much because I had a massive ego (I've never had one), but because I felt that it was simply the logical course my life would take. When springtime rolled around each year, playing baseball—in whatever form—was what I and my brothers and our friends would do. There was a field across Yondota Street just behind our house that we called "the big field." There was no official baseball diamond there, but one had been worn into the earth from the many games that had been played there. The block on which the field was situated was triangular in shape, with a factory at the north end that took up maybe a third of the total area. (I recall looking through the dirty windows of the factory, hoping to see pin-up calendars at the work stations.) The rest of the space was weeds and high grass, home for many a grasshopper. With "home plate" (usually whatever piece of paper we might find lying around) situated towards the south corner of the field, hitting the ball over Miami Street was a home run, although not many of us accomplished that feat. I'm pretty sure I didn't. Now there is no field. No base paths. No home runs. No grasshoppers.

"The big field"

Up Utah Street from our house, just past where I attended elementary school, was another vacant lot: Bower's Field. Or maybe it was Bauer's Field. Maybe there was no apostrophe. I don't know how that name came to be, although someone mentioned to me recently that he thought the old woman who lived immediately south of the lot was named Bower. Or Bauer. Like "the big field," it had a well-worn baseball diamond that seemed always to have been there. It was another regular "field of dreams" where four or five guys per team was typical. In such cases, right field would be closed to right-handed hitters; left field would be closed to lefty swingers. The Fischer family house at the north of the field served as our own Green Monster à la Boston's Fenway Park, except that it was white as I recall. Hitting the ball on the roof of the house was a home run; a ball hit over their back yard fence was a double. That field is now occupied by three or four houses.

If we had but two or three or four players in total, Strikeout was the name of the game. It merely required a rubber ball, a wall with a strike zone drawn on it (usually scratched in with a stone as we typically didn't have chalk on hand), and modified ground rules as to what constituted hits and outs. Most often these games were played at Franklin Elementary school or under the Anthony Wayne ("Hi-Level") Bridge, both of which were a few blocks from home. The fence at Franklin which separated the school playground from Oak Street was reachable, especially with a brand new ball. Some guys, like the much-older Bobby Meyers, could clear Oak Street.

Franklin Elementary Strikeout Wall (photo courtesy of John Nickoloff)

I could probably sit here for hours describing all the ways we played baseball (whiffle ball, Rundown, etc.) and the various places we played, but I won't. I hope you get the picture. We had baseball fever long before Major League Baseball based a marketing campaign on it.

My first attempt at organized baseball was the year I turned 9. Like all my friends in the neighbourhood with whom I played pick-up games, I tried out for my school's PeeWee team of nine-, ten-, and eleven-year-olds. Because even at 9, you pretty much know where you fit in skill-wise amongst your peers, I expected to be a shoe-in for the team. But for reasons I will never know, I was cut from the team and it was a such a shock to my system that I teared up. The head coach was Ray Vining's grandfather, Charles Abernathy¹, which, since Ray lived just behind me on Yondota Street, and we spent a lot of time together—whether playing ball or just hanging out—the cut felt especially deep.

The following year, I made the team. Mr. Abernathy was still the head coach and Jim Werner was his assistant. We played Oakdale Elementary at Navarre Park for our first game, and lefty Neal Gust was their pitcher. (Also, my dad's sister's brother-in-law, Harry Krzsczowski, was an Oakdale coach.) I sat the bench for the game, but with Oakdale winning something like 10-1 in the 7th (last) inning, I was told to grab a bat. The count got to three balls and two strikes, then I hit a line drive down the third-base line for a triple. I started every game from then on. Mid-season, Coach Abernathy recruited an over-aged² player, Tony Ruiz, to join the team, and we had to forfeit all the games we'd won in which he'd played. Abernathy was forced to resign (or so I recall) and Jim Werner, who was the best coach I've ever had, took over. Despite the drama, I had a great year, with something like four home runs and four triples, and at the end of the season was awarded the Most Valuable Player trophy, which sat atop our piano amongst my mom's bowling trophies for years.

My MVP year, 1966

The following season, our team went 14-0 in league play. We scored over a hundred runs in those fourteen games as I recall, and I had an even better year at the plate than the previous season. In a double-header we played against St. Thomas, I got seven hits in eight at bats, including a grand slam home run. I fully expected another MVP trophy, but I think it went to ten-year-old Ron Harris instead. The disappointment didn't last all that long—I was probably more surprised, really, than disappointed, but I really, really, really thought I deserved it. The true disappointment that year came in the city tournament against St. Catherine's. We were defeated by a run and it was my error while attempting to field a ground ball single hit to me in left field that allowed the winning run to score. The transition from hero to goat is lightning quick. My dad surprisingly didn't say a word about the game afterwards.

The next two years were in the next league up, Colts, but we had a new coach, Russ Menchaca, who had been Jim Werner's assistant the year before, and was our second baseman Rusty's dad. This is a sort of weird memory, but Russ was the only one who attempted to "fix" my batting approach. I had a hitch in my swing in which I shifted my weight to my back foot as the ball was about to leave the pitcher's hand, and just as the ball came onto the hitting zone, I'd shift my weight forward into the pitch as I swung. My two PeeWee seasons were proof enough that I didn't have a problem hitting that way, but Russ decided he needed to fix it. My two Colt seasons were less than spectacular. I don't recall much about our win-loss records for either year, although we probably had a .500 or maybe better winning percentage. I don't recall being in the starting lineup every game. For some reason, Russ started Steve Tscherne, who hadn't played on the PeeWee teams, instead of me in left field for a good part of the first season—maybe both. It might have been because Steve was a faster runner (he was the fastest sprinter in our class), but I'm pretty sure that Russ had something against me.

Everything else from those two seasons is a blank except for a time I stole second base while someone else was on third base. My older brother Mike was playing in the next level league, Junior Knothole, and I would go to his practices to watch and ingratiate myself with his teammates, many of whom I knew from the neighbourhood. In fact, his coach was Dick Simon, who was my friend/classmate/teammate Bill Simon's brother, and was married to my godparent's daughter. One of his practices involved the first-and-third situation, that is, baserunners at first and third with fewer than two outs, and Dick instructed the person on first base to take off for second base in an attempt to steal as soon as the pitcher began his stretch.³ I understood this to be a ploy to confuse the pitcher into balking,⁴ which would allow the runner on third base to score immediately. Anyway, during one of my games, I was given the signal to steal second with a runner on third base and I did exactly what Dick had told his team to do. It worked to perfection. The pitcher got confused and failed to step off the rubber⁵ before making a move towards me, thereby balking, and a run scored.

When it came time for the Knothole League for me, Dick Simon's team, Home Federal Savings and Loan, was my next logical step. Mike had played for Home Federal for a couple of years, and because I knew Dick so well, I expected to make the team. My cousin Jeff also played for Home Federal the year before and he was there. I naturally tried out for the outfield because that's all I'd really known, but Dick had me practice one day at third base, a position for which I had no legitimate training. Maybe he thought he could use me, even as a back-up player, if I could handle the position, but I don't recall much beyond that other than that I didn't shine during the practice. When final cuts were made, I learned I didn't make the team. While crestfallen, I didn't feel quite the sting I felt as a nine-year-old. There were no tears this time. Although there was a different sort of disappointment in me this time. Mickey Archer, a standout football player from Waite High School—who I'd heard had once crushed a baseball all the way from the ball diamond in the Waite Bowl into the football stadium across East Broadway—had made the team, and he hadn't shown up to even one of the tryout sessions. I recall going home and watching the first episode of M*A*S*H on television, my baseball career entirely in ruins.

But the thing about baseball is that the dream never dies. Well, maybe the dream of playing in the Big Leagues does, but the love of the game doesn't. As a Senior in high school, I decided to try out for the baseball team. Like so many high school kids, I had picked up smoking as a habit, and I wanted an activity that would help me to quit. The winter before baseball tryouts, I worked out with the wrestling team (I had wrestled my Freshman year so I was well-acquainted with what kind of workout I could get) in order to get some conditioning for the spring.

When spring rolled around, and I showed up for tryouts, I was told by more than one person that I was wasting my time, that as a Senior, if I didn't make the starting line-up on the team, I'd be cut in favour of a Junior or Sophomore. During tryouts, I did some working out as a pitcher, although I don't recall if I had actually intended to try out for that position, I think it just sort of presented itself, and when the final roster was announced, I'd made the team. Coach Bob Agoston must have liked something he'd seen (probably my sweeping curve ball!) and decided to keep me.

I mostly sat the bench, but was usually the first person to come in to relieve the starting pitcher if things got out of hand, or as in one instance, to replace a starter (Ron Harris, wouldn't you know!) who'd been kicked out of a game for arguing with the umpire. We lost to Bowsher High School that game, and I think I pitched an inning or two of scoreless baseball, even striking out one of the best hitters in the city, Jeff Kneisley. The sweeping curve ball!

My playing time was so limited that season that I can almost recall every game I played in and how I performed. I had four hits in sixteen at bats for a .250 batting average, although the only one that stands out came against a friend, Bob Utter, whom I'd played against in PeeWees (Oakdale), and who now played for St. Francis High School. As did Bill Simon. (Both Bob and Bill were named First Team All-City that year, as was the aforementioned Kneisley.) I started that game in left field, and came in to pitch in relief of Dale Hanley, who'd relieved Ted Hill, who'd been slapped around for at least seven runs. I didn't fare so well against another First Team All-City player, Rick Staccone, who blasted one of my pitches over the left fielder's head for a two-run triple. The sweeping curve ball!

And of course, my name was spelled wrong in the paper the next day, thanks to Coach Agoston, or maybe the opposing coach, or maybe just a Blade reporter.⁶ At least I only had an S added to my name, Bob Utter became someone named Otto.

The Blade, Toledo, Ohio, 28 April 1973

A few other games come into my head when I think of that year:

• I came in to pitch in relief in a game that we were winning by two or three runs. I inherited a bases-loaded situation and for whatever reason, Coach Agoston played the infield in instead of at their regular positions. All we needed was a double-play to get out of the inning, and in fact, I got a ground ball from the first hitter I faced, but since the shortstop wasn't at his regular position, the ball got through the infield scoring a couple of runs. I think the runner on first eventually scored the winning run. It might have been later that same game that I got a chance to hit, and Coach Agoston gave me the take sign (read: "don't swing!") for the first five pitches, and when I finally got the swing-away sign, I took a pitch that was a couple of baseball diameters off the plate, but got called a strike by the umpire, who was—as fate would have it—my former coach, Russ Menchaca. Further evidence that Russ had something against me.


• I similarly got to bat late in a sectional tournament game against Woodmore, whose pitcher was big, hard throwing left-hander, Jeff Large, who went on to pitch briefly in the Major Leagues. The scenario was the same: Agoston gave me the take sign for the first five pitches and then let me swing at the sixth. There was no way I was going to catch up to Large's fastball without having swung the bat even once. Of course, I didn't, and struck out.


• At Ottawa Hills, I was put into run for somebody late in the game and was given the steal sign. The pitcher was a left-hander and I was promptly picked off for the third out of the inning. (We at least won the game.)


• We beat the best team in our division, St. John's, on their home field, and I sat the bench for most of that game as well. I got a chance to hit late in the game and on the first pitch, which was a sweeping curve ball that looked like it was coming at my head made me fall back out of the way only to get called a strike. Mr. Wise-ass Pitcher thought he had my number and threw the same pitch again, only this time I stood my ground and sent the ball screaming over third base for a double. Later that game, though, I had a flashback to that St. Catherine's game when the ball went through my legs for an error. The teammate who chased that ball down all those many years before, Bob Gladieux, was the same teammate who chased this ball down.

The last game that year and of my baseball career (softball is a whole other story) came against Rogers High School. It was memorable for a couple of reasons: 1. I was the starting pitcher; and 2. My dad and mom attended. Dad had hardly ever come to my games as a kid—the embarrassing loss to St. Catherine's is the only one that I actually recall. Coach Agoston must have told me in advance I'd be starting, and I let them know and they'd decided to come.

What also stands out to me as I think about that game is how badly coached I was. And I say that realizing that given the seasonal aspects of high school baseball in Northwest Ohio, there is limited ability to practice outdoors before the season begins. But as I think back on our pre-season practices, there was not one in which I'd worked on my move to first base as a matter of trying to keep a runner from trying to steal second base. In a sense, I should have known, given all the baseball I'd played and watched, but still. I don't recall any discussions about signs from the catcher in those situations. So fast forward to the Rogers game. At one point in the game, I either walked a batter or he got a base hit, and he stole second base because I made no attempt to keep him close at first base. All these years later, the memory lingers of our catcher, Rick Harris (Ron's brother), giving me the sign to throw to first base and me not recognizing that it was a sign to throw to first base because no one had ever told me it was the sign to throw to first base! I thought he was signaling for a fastball (his index finger pointed down—#1 in typical baseball signs) on the outside part of the plate. (I imagine my dad in the stands tsk-tsking me for not throwing over to first.) After the stolen base, you'd think Rick or Coach Agoston would have come to the mound and said, "Hey, you've got to throw over to first base once in a while." or "Why the hell didn't you throw over to first base when I gave you the sign?!?" But no. None of that happened.

Anyway... I must have pitched a halfway decent game otherwise since they'd only scored two runs off me.

I batted a couple of times in the game. I recall that the opposing pitcher threw what ostensibly was a knuckleball. It floated up to the plate my first time up and with a swing, I thought I'd tagged him for a double or a triple, but the centerfielder made a good running catch in right-center. Weirdly, in that moment, I was conscious of my dad's presence when the ball came off my bat and appeared as though it was going to split the outfielders. I recall thinking at that very moment that it would please him. Maybe it was because I'd heard him say "C'mon, Pat!" or something as I stepped to the plate. I walked my second time and scored the tying run at the time. We went on to win 3-2, but I was taken out with an inning or two to go; Dale Hanley replaced me and got credit for the win. Dad didn't say a word about the game afterwards.

When the season was over, and after I'd graduated, I talked to someone about playing ball that summer. Maybe it was Coach Agoston who got me in touch with someone else who let me know that there were tryouts for a Senior Knothole team on the south end of town. I went once and got the impression that I wouldn't be given much of a chance. The only two things I recall about the tryout was that my opposing pitcher in the Rogers game, Al Leininger, was trying out as well, and that I was chided by the coach for hitting the cut-off man on a throw from the outfield. I had always been taught to aim for the cut-off man's head, which is what I did (I didn't overthrow the cut-off), but apparently, that was too high for the coach's likes. Yeah, I'm pretty sure I read his attitude and decided to stay home the following week and for the rest of my life.

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¹Later that year or the next, Ray moved from Yondota Street to a beautiful Victorian house on the corner of Starr Avenue and Potter Street, just a few blocks east of me, and one day, while I was hanging out at his place, his grandfather (who either stopped by or possibly lived there as well) came down the stairs and saw me. He balled his hands up rubbed his eyes and said, "Boo-hoo-hoo!" making fun of my reaction to his having cut me from the team. [back]

²PeeWee baseball was for 9- through 11-year-olds, and while Tony might have been 11 at the time he joined the team, he turned 12 that year. [back]

³Unless you’re familiar with baseball this might not make sense to you. [back]

⁴Ibid. [back]

⁵Ibid. [back]

⁶As I recall, the coach of the winning team had the responsibility of calling in the results of a game to The Blade, our local paper. No doubt, St. Francis’s coach had merely reported the name given to him by Coach Agoston. I’m guessing that Otto versus Utter was the reporter’s mistake. [back]

Homecoming

Waller Street [ 1 | 365 ]

I posted my last photographs on Instagram the other day, and included some text regarding that decision. So far, only a few people have commented (two of whom I know in real life thanks to Flickr), which doesn't surprise me in the least. It's indicative of the site's soul, I guess, or perhaps more accurately, its lack of soul. Scrolling and tapping the heart button (or not) is the norm, which I wouldn't really consider interaction. I rarely have gotten comments there in the ten years or more I've used the site. As I've complained before, Instagram has never come close to replicating the "social" media site Flickr was in its heyday, although I suspect it never was intended to be, and it most certainly was not after Facebook purchased it.

This morning, I decided to scroll through my contacts' photos with the plan of commenting on some in order to get back in the habit of doing so, rather than merely clicking on the star-favourite button à la Instagram. The very first image in my feed was a beautiful photograph taken of a church on a foggy, snowy morning with a quadcopter, so I clicked on it to comment. What I found, however, was pretty much what took a lot of joy out of Flickr many years ago. Nearly all of the comments appear to be bot-like, and include links to groups where the commenters either saw the image or were promoting. To the right are all the groups (twenty-six as I write this) to which the photographer had added the photograph. I typed out a comment that I wanted to leave, but chose not to.

Flickr screenshot

When Flickr was probably at its height (for me, anyway), someone got the great idea—and by great, I mean NOT great—of creating awards for "outstanding" photography or some such on the site. I don't recall now how exactly what went down, but I believe a group was created and others could nominate your photo(s) for what was called the Flicky awards. In the discussion section of the group, a template was posted which you could copy and paste into the comments of photos you wanted to nominate, and the template included HTML code which added flashy, obnoxious animated GIFs (pronounced JIFFs, by the way... hahaha!) to the comments, and soon these ugly things were all over the place. It SO diminished the Flickr experience. I recall, though, that the person who created the "awards" disappeared from the site, along with the stupid-ass Flickys. Nonetheless, the posting of templated comments to photographs continued unabated.

Also at about the same time, Flickr had been sold to Yahoo! and in what was probably an effort to monetize the site for that company, a feature known as Explore, was created to highlight photographs that had become popular. Many people (including yours truly) gamed the system in order to get our photographs into Explore, although for me and a handful of friends, it was the satisfaction of gaming the algorithm we were after. Regardless, as people's photos began appearing on the Explore page, comments were flooded yet again with templated comments that were accompanied either by an obnoxious glittery GIF or some other sort of unrelated image as a matter of giving congratulations for having appeared on the Explore pages. It wasn't substantive, genuine commentary.

And so, my first attempt to dive back into Flickr hasn't yielded much joy, but I will persist.

Aquatic Cove [ 3 | 365 ]

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Note: Most of what I've claimed here is based on my memory from close to twenty years ago, as well as after a rather lengthy hiatus from Flickr.