BOX 235: L.A., Sheboygan and some "leftovers."

Close observers of these posts (I like to imagine you exist!) will be surprised to see this photo of the family sitting on our backyard swing, since it would seem to belong four posts ago in BOXES 230-231, showing Tiffany, Aron and newborn Forest in the same clothes on the same swing. Well, the other night I discovered a slide box with an assortment of photos missing from previous boxes--evidently, years ago I'd stuffed those loose slides into one box and forgotten about it. A few of the pics are (excuse my immodesty) really good, like the one above--I'm guessing they were separated from their box to develop into prints. Others are pretty much duplicate shots that I had not quite discarded, while a few are downright misfires (and have now finally been tossed). If you haven't seen previous posts, let me introduce you to Tiffany, Aron, Michelle and Becky in the top row, Sam and Forest on laps, summer of 2001.

I thought I would share these misplaced but newly scanned pics with you before going on to post a few "new" slides I took in Los Angeles in spring 2002 and later in Sheboygan (with even more grandson pics!). I'll save my report on our Hawai'i trip that summer for the next few posts, and when I have extra time I'll add the "leftovers" to their appropriate spots in previous posts, making the photos below redundant to future readers/viewers.

The earliest pic from this collection is from 1994, when I attended a conference in Scottsdale and observed the swimming pool outside my hotel window. The next eight are from 1998, when Anne and I went to the Waipahu Plantation Village to see the model village for sugarcane plantation workers, set up on the site of an abandoned plantation. If you're curious about Hawai'i history and culture, or want to revisit my other photos of the Village, see BOXES 210-212. The Village contains one model cottage for a family of each of the ethnic groups that worked the plantation: Japanese, Filipino, Portuguese, Korean and more. In the first two photos below you see a couple of these cottages, followed by pics of two quite different kitchen areas:

In the next four shots you see a typical front porch; a barn or workshed; a saimin stand with what looks like a general store next to it (saimin is a ramen-like noodle soup; McDonald's in Hawai'i had saimin on their menu until 2022); and a multilingual warning sign in the dispensary.

I was happy to find a good photo from our campus trip to Belgium in March 2000. Taken in Antwerp, the pic shows a statue of the painter Van Dyck looking up at an angel holding electric or lightning bolts, standing atop a turn-of-the-20th-Century department store.

Next are four photos from Orvieto in the summer of 2001. I probably put the first two aside because of unsatisfactory focus. The one of the palace is passable; I've kept the blurry one of a street at night only because it reminds me of the walk we took to the Cathedral after 10 pm amid the busy crowd on our first night.

BOX 225 contains a better photo of Anne standing outside our Orvieto hotel window--this one has her face behind a window bar. But I think the view of Orvieto from outside the city is actually better in this rediscovered photo than in the one I published:

Another pic I like, and have no idea why it 'wandered off,' is this next one of a herd of sheep underneath what look like olive trees--one sheep reaching up to munch on leaves. It was taken somewhere in Tuscany.

Next I find a couple of Montepulciano pictures from later that trip. One shows the drive leading up to the church of San Biagio, the other a view from our hotel window, with San Biagio on the lower ground to the right:

From later yet on the trip are two shots taken at our agriturismo stay at the Fattoria La Loggia: a not-so-good view out a window in one of the out-buildings and a decent shot of young grapes, figs and olive trees on the farm:

From later that same summer here's Becky holding Sam and Forest, followed by Becky and Michelle each holding Forest, probably outside Aron and Tiffany's house:

And finally we're back to the kids on the backyard swing. Besides the photo at the top of this post, I found two others: first, one with Anne and me joining the group:

. . . and second, one with just the three siblings and the grandkids:

And now on to the "new" slides, taken the next spring. I had stopped bringing my camera on visits to New York and Los Angeles, but this time I did bring it to LA when I went to see friends. On this visit I took only two pictures in public places. The first pic below shows the beautiful courtyard of a tea house on Melrose Avenue--a great place to relax with a cup of some special brew. My friend Estie is sitting, looking downward, while I went to a higher level to get a wider view. The second photo is of the interior of Carney's, a famous hot dog place inside a yellow Union Pacific train car perched along Sunset Strip.

I see that I took several photos of Estie's dog, Mike, including ones of our friend Foster holding him and ones with Mike wearing an extremely weird outfit (surely useless on most LA days, unless Mike was going skiing in the mountains):

Estie had recently renovated her small kitchen, including new cabinets and fridge. Here she is playing Betty Furness. (Only readers of a certain age or devotees of 1950s TV ads will get my reference.)

Meanwhile, our friend Gloria had renovated her parents' house and garden in Santa Monica, and I took photos of the living room and parts of the yard:

Back home, it was more pics of the grandkids. Anne took a half-dozen slides of Forest and Sam taking a bath in our kitchen sink:

I like seeing the display of blue glass in the kitchen window--besides the bottles you can see a glass fish and a tiny pitcher, the latter something we bought at the Jane Austen House in Bath the year before.

Finally, here are two more photos of the boys. Sam is working a puzzle we'd bought for him in Rome earlier that year.

On May 21 Anne and I went to Hawai'i with nine students from my 'Literature and Cultures of Hawai'i' course. I'll explain the origins of this campus trip and show some slides of the Big Island in my next post.