Weekend With Shades - Sunday - July 5

THE CREATIVE TOOLBOX
BY DENISE OLSON
A Monthly - Weekend With Shades - Column

Remember the days when you picked up your photos at the drugstore and then sat down with a soft lead pencil to carefully document the details on each one before they were forgotten? Neither do I. Even though I’ve been pretty good at documenting my photos, there are many times that effort consisted of notes on the envelope the film-processor gave me - in ink no less.

Digital photos are revolutionary in many ways - and documenting their contents is one of them. The digital file that is your photograph actually contains a lot more than just the image. It also contains metadata. Huh? Wikipedia says it best: “The simplest definition of metadata is that it is data about data - more specifically information (data) about a particular content (data).” Your photo file contains information about the image as well as the image itself.

Weekend With Shades - Saturday - July 4

MISS PENELOPE DREADFUL
BY DENISE LEVENICK
A Monthly - Weekend With Shades - Column

For The:
Pueblo Post-Intelligencer
July 4, 1900
Will They Appear Again?
Citizens Await Annual View of Dead Sisters
Miss Penelope Dreadful

Once again, the patriotic people of Pueblo will line the streets of this fair city to celebrate the Independence of Our Nation with fife and drum, marching veterans, and gaily decorated vehicles of every kind, all the while watching with apprehension for what has become in the past few years an annual appearance of ghostly apparitions from the past.

Pueblo has become only the latest of many cities, towns, and villages to report similar visitations from the deceased, but owing to the reputation of the departed and the tragic circumstances of their demise, the Ghosts of Verity and Columbia Von Ritter, have acquired legendary stature and become household names throughout the state, if not the country since their appearance July 4, 1897 in the town's annual Independence Day Parade.

PENELOPE DREADFUL'S PAST Penny Dreadful Introduction All That Was Needed . . . An Easter Story Dear Mama Strong Persuasion

The Visual Chronicles Of One Who Fought

GERALD PERRY FOUGHT FOR FREEDOM
OUR FREEDOM

Sketches
Gerald Perry
1918
Gerald F. Perry

Gerald F. Perry was stationed in Brest, France, in 1918/1919. He drew two books of pencil sketches that are in my possession. While they are not photographs, they are a snapshot of the life of American soldiers during the First World War. Here are a few examples of the sketches contained in the book.

Liberté, égalité, fraternité
Liberty, equality, fraternity
The National Motto of France

Sketches
In France 1918
Beaucoup
Chocolate

We do not care how much
you look at this book, BUT
PLEASE do NOT get your
fingers on the drawings!

At The Truck School

Officer: Find me the firing order of that motor -
Student: "Er - I - Er - I
I'm afraid I don't know
where it is, sir.
I - I - I had it a minute ago,
but someone must have taken it, sir!"

Memories Of Brest - The Rest Camp
Sleeping in tents in the rain
The Chow Line
The Start - Intermission - 15 Min. Later The Finish
Joy Riding
Calisthenics

Two Soldiers
2 - 16 - 19
S. S. America

Home Sweet Home!!

This is the last page of the sketch book. It appears that Gerald has drawn the home he left behind and a street map of his hometown from memory.

The 75th Carnival of Genealogy

Sources:

Perry, Gerald F. Sketchbook. ca. 1918-1919. Privately held by Anella Rogers, [ADDRESS FOR PRIVATE USE,] Woodinville, WA. 2009.

Weekend With Shades - Sunday - June 28

APPEALING SUBJECTS
BY CRAIG MANSON
A Monthly - Weekend With Shades - Column

That's right; good ol' Uncle Sam has a treasure trove of photographs dating from the earliest days of photography in America and he'll let you have [most of] them at no cost and free of copyright restrictions. You already knew that, didn't you? You know all about the Library of Congress's various collections; you know that the Smithsonian has a Flickr site; and of course you know about the National Archives photo collections.

In fact, those collections just barely scratch the surface of the millions of photographs that the government owns, and which may be available to you. Virtually every government agency from the CIA to the Natural Resources Conservation Service has photographs in their archives that you may be interested in having. So how do you get your hands on Uncle Sam's photo treasures?

Weekend With Shades - Saturday - June 27

THE HUMOR OF IT
BY DONNA POINTKOUSKI
A Monthly - Weekend With Shades -





When it comes to summer vacations, it helps to maintain a sense of humor. The same can certainly be said for vacation photos. On vacations in the pre-digital camera age, photographers were limited by the amount of money they had for film and developing. This resulted in a certain stinginess when it came to taking photos. If that one photo you took in front of Mt. Fuji was fuzzy, that was your only shot. Which explains why a lot of out-of-focus photos exist in my parents' collection of photos. Or the family went away for an entire summer and you have three photos to show for it.

Today, we don't have that problem, but the opposite...a glorious glut of photographs. It's free, take another! We don't have to print them all! After the vacation photo-taking blitzkrieg ends, you can be left with hundreds of photos from your two weeks away. If you have had to suffer, or rather ENDURE, with either a computer-generated slide-show or a phone-book size photo album of Aunt Suzie's trip to the Blarney Stone, raise your hand! Better yet, if you are the one making your family suffer, raise BOTH hands!

Many Things Thursday - Mourning Visiting Cards

"The time has come," the Walrus said, "to talk of many things."

Thursday, on Shades Of The Departed, will be dedicated to many things,
and nothing in particular.

Many Things Thursday

The footnoteMaven also writes the History Hare Column (The Hare Of The History That Bit You) for The Graveyard Rabbit Online Journal. In this month's article you'll find a discussion of the purchase of several mourning visiting cards and the very interesting story uncovered. Below is an excerpt of the article that can be found in the Graveyard Rabbit Online Journal.

MOURNING VISITING CARDS

Often when researching, I am taken completely by surprise when a simple "nothing extraordinary" photograph or piece of ephemera, turns out to be anything but simple. When research starts it often takes on a life of its own and literally explodes.

So it was with a group of visiting cards I purchased. The group was of fifty plain, name only, no decoration, visiting cards, early 1900s. I purchased them because the lot description said there were two cards with black borders. I hoped these were mourning cards, but the seller did not know and was just getting rid of some paper ephemera he had purchased at an estate sale. I purchased them, hoping they'd be what I was looking for.

Mrs. Burd Grubb
July 1913

Read the entire story on The Graveyard Rabbit Online Journal.

Twice Told Tuesday - The New State Law

Twice Told Tuesday features a photography related article
reprinted from old photography books, magazines, and newspapers.

"Adam lay down and slept—and from his side
A woman in her magic beauty rose;
Dazzled and charmed, he called that woman 'bride'
And his first sleep became his last repose."

~Unknown ~



Here's The Proper Way To Be Married
April 12, 1908

The New State Law

Since Jan. 1 of this year the old marriage law of New York State has been changed, and now both the bride and bridegroom-to-be must perforce to go personally to the Registry Office at City Hall to sign and obtain their marriage license, and this should be done some days before the marriage is to take place, although of course, the religious ceremony may be solemnized immediately after the State Certificate has been returned to the city officials.

The clergyman, too, must be visited not less than a week prior to the date determined upon for the wedding, that the State certificate may be signed by him and that the certificate of the church may be filled in and signed by the contracting parties, and naturally also the minister must be consulted in regard to the time, date, and place for the service. To have all the plans carefully made out and invitations issued and then to find that the desired prelate will not be able to officiate simply because the importance of his being present had been temporarily overlooked has be known to have occurred more than once, and the disappointment ensuing was no less great because by that time unavoidable

Under the new statutes a marriage license must be taken out in the town or city of which the bride, not the bridegroom, is a resident.

If the bridegroom is under 21 years of age or the bride under 18 the consent of the parents must previously be obtained, but this last is not new law, although, perhaps, more frequently violated than all others of recent years.

Sources:

Anonymous. "Here's The Proper Way To Be Married." The New York Times, 12 April 1908. Online archives. http://hngraphical.proquest.com/ : 2009.

Photographs:

Sneve, Willie & First Wife. Unknown. Cabinet Card. Unknown. Privately held by the footnoteMaven, Preston, Washington. 2009.