Sweet Juniper (All)

typetext

2012-06-01T02:06:23-00:00

I had the good fortune to spend the long weekend in a house on the Ohio River in Oldham County just outside of Louisville. This is a picture of a man in a seersucker suit gazing upon an entire aisle of delicious locally-produced bourbon. Kentucky, you're doing it right. Previous Photo This image is Copyrighted. No unauthorized reuse.

Lawn Boy

2012-06-01T02:06:21-00:00

I made my first fortune with a lawnmower. It was a green Lawn Boy pusher without frills: no self-propulsion, no variable speeds, no easy-turn wheels. The lawn trimmings collected in a frayed cloth bag that bulged against your shins when it came time to empty it, and after several summers mowing a half dozen neighborhood lawns the smell of moist green trimmings spilling out of that bag was

Wendell Needs a Job

2012-06-01T02:06:23-00:00

I told the poor guy I thought the kids were getting a little too big for him to pull them in the covered dog wagon this year (also, he's six, which means he's even older than me in dog years now and I can't even climb a sand dune without getting excessively dramatic). He wasn't happy about that news. He needs something to do. I think he wants me to build a harness for our neighbor's black

Country School, by Jerrold Beim (ill. Louis Darling) (1955)

2012-06-01T02:06:09-00:00

Images from J.T., by Gordon Parks (1969)

2012-06-01T02:06:04-00:00

Two of my favorite images from the great Gordon Parks' 1969 storybook (written by Jane Wagner) J.T.

Previous Week's Urchins

Nearly all of these urchins were discovered in the photography archives of the Library of Congress (and available without copyright restrictions online). Otherwise, urchin photos will be credited to the appropriate photographer with a link to its source (unless they come from my own collection of photographs from unknown photographers). If there is ever a copyright concern, do not hesitate to contact me.

The Mysterious Tire Swing

2012-06-01T02:06:11-00:00

A few weeks ago a bunch of the neighborhood kids started working on a fort built around a dead tree that had fallen on a strange triangle of land that was incredibly overgrown and wild; it was always unclear who owned this sliver of land and it seemed like the perfect place to build a fort. One day we brought out a picnic and a bunch of tools and built a huge wall from the fallen tree to

The Launch of the River Hunter

2012-06-01T02:06:12-00:00

Ship launch from Cockatoo Island Dockyard - The "River Hunter" A class standard steamship released along a slipway into Sydney Harbour, 1945, Photograph by Alan Evans. I was cleaning up my desktop this morning and saw this picture there; it's one I return to often. I first saw it on one of my favorite websites (I Had Dreams Like That, which sadly hasn't been updated in some time) last

Adventures in (Wooden) Swordmaking

2012-06-01T02:06:35-00:00

This is Jim again. I know last time I said if my wife ("Wood") didn't post here I was changing the name of this part of the blog from Woodcraft to Jimcraft, but (not only does that sound incredibly stupid) this week I'm writing about actual woodcraft, so the name is sticking. For now. A few weeks ago I was in my dad's auto body shop looking at some of the woodworking he's been doing. He and

Rural Decay

2012-06-01T02:06:23-00:00

During the months I spent taking pictures for the recent post about the Fauxtopias of the Detroit Suburbs, I spent a lot of time driving around those liminal spaces between Detroit's exurban communities and the Michigan countryside, and one afternoon I was driving on some dirt roads and came across a huge landfill with hundreds of trucks approaching and turning into the facility to drop off

William Klein's "Baseball Cards," New York (1955)

2012-06-01T02:06:04-00:00

Those are 1955 Bowman baseball cards in their hands. I believe with all my heart that the 1955 Bowman was the greatest baseball card design ever. Each player's photo appeared as though it was on a classic wood-grained television set. In hand-painted color! The best part of the 1955 Bowman series was that it included the umpires. Umpires with baseball cards! My dad used to drag me to auto swap meets all over the midwest, and while he looked for the car parts and whatever else he was after I scoured the endless rows of greasy metal for dealers who set out their old baseball cards (this was right at the beginning of the 1987-1991 bubble). One time we were down in Indianapolis and one of the dealers put out a whole box of 1955 Bowmans. I bought them all, and have them still. It's too bad they were printed on such lousy cardboard.

William Klein (b. 1928) is mostly known for his fashion photography, but he captured some great New York urchins in his Life is Good and Good for You, for which he won the Prix Nadar award.I suspect I'll be sharing some more of his work here soon.

Previous Week's Urchins