Kodachrome

When I first read a couple of years ago that Kodak was planning to stop selling and developing Kodachrome slide film it was one of those news stories that made me realize the world I knew had changed.

Digitization of technology and the Internet were the reason, but it was still a shock to think back about the Kodachrome bricks I bought at B&H Photo at its old West 17th Street location, the rolls stored in the fridge, and then shipped in pre-paid mailers for processing.  The strongest memories were about the days the familiar yellow box of developed slides arrived in the mail, sorted into carousel trays, and then viewed with such anticipation and delight through the Leitz projector on the fold-up Da-Lite screen kept under the living room couch.

Stacked rows of ordered carousels are still in a downstairs closet next to the projector, but it's a rare day we set up the projector table, raise the screen, dim the lights . . . and talk. Pictures are now digital, instantaneous, and online. They still have great power to capture life and create memories, but the experience is different. The drama and storytelling of the family slide show is gone. I learned a lot about the world over many after-dinner slide shows with my grandfather who narrated his travels with my grandmother in the 60s and 70s. It's where I first went wide-eyed with wonder about far-away places like the pyramids in Giza, Loch Ness, Easter Island, and Ankor Wat in Cambodia.

Yesterday's New York Times ran a wistful story about Dwayne's Photo in Kansas, the processor who developed the last rolls of Kodachrome. The byline is from A.G. Sulzberger, the son of the paper's publisher, who began writing for the Times last year.  I think he misses Kodachrome too.

"An unlikely pilgrimage is under way to Dwayne’s Photo, a small family business that has through luck and persistence become the last processor in the world of Kodachrome, the first successful color film and still the most beloved.

"That celebrated 75-year run from mainstream to niche photography is scheduled to come to an end on Thursday when the last processing machine is shut down here to be sold for scrap.

"In the last weeks, dozens of visitors and thousands of overnight packages have raced here, transforming this small prairie-bound city not far from the Oklahoma border for a brief time into a center of nostalgia for the days when photographs appeared not in the sterile frame of a computer screen or in a pack of flimsy prints from the local drugstore but in the warm glow of a projector pulling an image from a carousel of vivid slides."

"At the peak, there were about 25 labs worldwide that processed Kodachrome, but the last Kodak-run facility in the United States closed several years ago, then the one in Japan and then the one in Switzerland. Since then, all that was left has been Dwayne’s Photo. Last year, Kodak stopped producing the chemicals needed to develop the film, providing the business with enough to continue processing through the end of 2010. And last week, right on schedule, the lab opened up the last canister of blue dye.

"Kodak declined to comment for this article."

Postscript –– I worked on the Canon account in the 80s and 90s and helped launch the company's first digital cameras. It was and is about innovation.

Shovel Ready?

New York City Mayor Bloomberg is taking a beating for not getting the city's streets plowed fast enough after Sunday's blizzard, especially in the boroughs.  More than 1,000 comments have been posted on The New York Times' City Room Blog in response to the question "Has your street been plowed?"  To lead Times readers to the only possible answer the paper published photographs of the Mayor's East 79th Street block just hours after the snow ended next to a typical block in Brooklyn more than a day later.

East 79th Street, Manhattan

Himrod Street, Bushwick, Brooklyn.

At a press conference defending the city's response, Bloomberg, ever the plutocrat, didn't miss a beat.  As reported in The New York Times:

“The world has not come to an end,” he said. “The city is going fine. Broadway shows were full last night. There are lots of tourists here enjoying themselves. I think the message is that the city goes on.”

Mr. Mayor, a reporter demanded, do you regret the response to the snowstorm? Mr. Bloomberg’s look went deadpan.  “You know, I regret everything in this world,” he said.

Blizzard

We didn't have a white Christmas this year but the next day and night more than made up for it as this shot of the creche scene at the local First Presbyterian Church attests.

 It snowed even more in New Jersey.

Reason's Greetings

People either cried or laughed when Rupert Murdoch bought Dow Jones and The Wall Street Journal.  I fell in between.  Can one conclude that it's the paper's current editorial wisdom, its financial savvy, or both that would solicit holiday op-eds on the subject of faith from the likes of the U.K's The Office funnyman Ricky Gervais and best-selling vampire novelist Anne Rice?

• A Holiday Message from Ricky Gervais
• Anne Rice's Christmas Confession  

They each make good arguments, but it's interesting that the Gervais column has just under 6,000 reader comments, while Rice's has just under 100 comments.

Guess which one is the atheist?

Wholehearted

Best twenty minutes I spent in a good while.

Brene Brown at TED. 

CTR - RIP

Merry Christmas Cathy.

Lunar eclipse on winter solstice

372 years in the making . . .

Matryoshka Doll

Yep.

C'mon, Get Happy!

111th Congress - 87 Percent Disapproval

With an historically low approval rating of 13 percent, the 111th Congress shows its contempt for Americans, and last November's voters, by foisting a 1,924-page, $1.2 trillion omnibus spending bill while its members are trying to get out of Dodge.

From today's Wall Street Journal:

"Democrats have had 11 months to write a budget for fiscal 2011, which began on October 1. But Majority Leader Harry Reid and Appropriations Chairman Daniel Inouye have dumped this trillion-dollar baby on Senators at the very last minute, when everyone is busy and wants to go home for the holidays. No doubt that was the plan. The continuing resolution to fund the government expires on Saturday, so Mr. Reid wants to squeeze Senators against the deadline. And with the press corps preoccupied by the tax debate, the spending bill is greased to slide through with little or no public scrutiny.

"Defenders argue that the bill is restrained because it freezes overall spending for federal agencies at 2010 levels. But 2010 was an inflated budget with a $1.3 trillion deficit. Paul Ryan, soon to be House Budget Chairman, notes that nondefense discretionary spending rose 24% over those two years. Add stimulus funding and federal agency spending soared to $796 billion in 2010 from $434 billion, an 84% spending increase. Republicans have promised to return to 2008 spending levels, and the omnibus will make that much harder."

Senator Bernie Sanders led an unsuccessful eight-hour filibuster last week to block a two-year extension of the current tax cuts.  Greed?

How about spending?

A Year at the Movies

All I Want for Christmas?

What would Freud say?

A picture is worth a thousand words

Standard of Excellence?

On November 29, the 92nd Street Y held a lecture by Steve Martin, the actor and writer, with an art critic from The New York Times.  The lecture was on his new novel about contemporary art, An Object of Beauty, released a week earlier.  It was a sell out with 900 people.  It was also Martin's second such appearance at the 92nd Street Y, and his second lecture facilitated by Deborah Salomon, the Times critic.

What Martin and Solomon didn't know was the event was  telecast via closed circuit, and the audience was solicited for questions.  This led to a Y staffer handing a note to Salomon, on stage and mid-lecture, directing her to ask Martin questions about his career, like what was it like to host the Oscars and appear with Alec Baldwin in the movie It's Complicated.  It was all downhill from there.  The next day the Y's executive director e-mailed the lecture's guests, apologizing for the event that didn't meet the Y's "standard of excellence" along with a full refund.

Martin wrote an op-ed in yesterday's Times, titled The Art of Interruption, where he explained "If the e-mailers could have lived with 'I am unamused' for just a little longer, or had given us some understanding based on past performance, or even a little old-fashioned respect, something worthwhile, unusual or calamitous might have emerged. Who knows, maybe I would have ended up singing my novel."

Or maybe he just should have done his old King Tut routine?

Martin said he's looking forward to returning soon to the 92nd Street Y "to play basketball."  He also quipped, "As for the Y’s standard of excellence, it can’t be that high because this is the second time I’ve appeared there."

And to match digital ire, he tweeted a warning to fellow artists.

Ex-cu-use me!

Lift Thine Eyes

Northfield Mount Hermon School has published a book, Lift Thine Eyes, about the school's history.

"Lift Thine Eyes tells the story of how the Northfield and Mount Hermon schools came into being—how they prospered, met challenges, and evolved into the NMH of today. Eight alumni authors reveal the school in a new light. They explore how the campuses were shaped by D.L. Moody, by the country’s  finest architects and landscape architects, and by the land itself. The book also chronicles how NMH  responded to change, including the complex influences that led to consolidation on the Mount Hermon campus. More than 300 archival photographs, maps, and architectural drawings, plus stunning contemporary images, make this Northfield Mount Hermon document a visual and historical treasure."

Lift Thine Eyes from Northfield Mount Hermon School on Vimeo.