Dinosaur (with Flowers)

It is not so easy anymore to find a place that develops film (outside of the drugstore chains), everyone but us dinosaurs having converted to digital. Actually, I have a digital camera, but it is already obsolete. The battery fails, I can’t see the viewfinder outside in sunlight, and the color isn’t true. So I tend to fall back on my trusty Olympus point-and-shoot.

A few months ago, I tried to drop a roll of film off at the usual place, near Times Square: two Korean ladies sent out film to be developed and sold lottery tickets. But they and their store were gone—split, absconded, departed, extinct. I hadn’t even liked the Korean ladies—they insisted on taking a deposit, and chatted among themselves while waiting on me, as if I weren’t there—but now that they were gone I realized what a good deal they’d been giving me: double prints, a disk with digital images, and a free roll of film for every roll I dropped off. Of course, this last just made me keep taking pictures and held me in their thrall.

So I fell back on Walgreens, which has a branch smack in the middle of Times Square. I had to ride the escalator to the third floor and wait in line at the cash register, and when it was my turn the cashier made a phone call and then reported to me that the photo person was on break and would be back in ten minutes. I instantly morphed into crabby-middle-aged-lady mode and flounced off, the best you can when you’re a crabby middle-aged lady on the down escalator. On my way out, I tried to keep the virtual blinders on and not buy anything (did you know you can buy lunchmeat, like prepackaged bologna, in Times Square?) but succumbed to a four-pack of granola bars.

A few days later, I happened to pass a photo lab on Seventeenth Street near Union Square and left my film there. That place did a nice job, though it cost almost twice as much as the Korean ladies. There was an extra charge for the disk, and no free duplicates. Or film.

Then, last month, between trips, I left a roll of film from one trip with the folks on Seventeenth Street, and returned from the second trip to a message that my new photo lab was closed. The guy gave a phone number and said I could pick up my prints across the street from where the shop had been. I did not call back instantly, but at the first opportunity I went to where he said the prints would be and found nothing. I called the number, got transferred to a cell phone, and left a message; no one called back. Now the number is no longer forwarding calls. And I had two more rolls of film to develop.

Back in midtown, I noticed a photo lab in the vicinity of Grand Central, so I dropped my film off there earlier this week. I went back to pick up the prints the next day, and as I waited my turn I took out a twenty-dollar bill and a few singles. They had asked if I wanted double prints, and I had shrewdly asked if the second set was free, and they had even more shrewdly said no. I declined the second set, but I did ask for a disk. I knew it was going to cost more than the Korean ladies, and suspected it would cost more than the recently defunct place near Union Square, but still I was unprepared. The total was a whopping $39.50. No free film, either.

Now, I take a lot of pictures, on the principle that if you take enough pictures, some of them are bound to come out O.K. (Isn’t that one of the secrets of successful photographers?) And since I was in Amsterdam, taking full advantage of the amenities (coffee shop, garden, café; repeat), I took a lot of stupid pictures. For some reason I have a whole series of shots of gigantic eyeglasses outside optical shops. Of more than fifty exposures, only four pictures were any good, meaning that those four cost ten dollars apiece.

Anyway, here are a few of the keepers: Amsterdam, cosmos, passionflower. And a fond farewell to film.






Next: incandescent light.

Homage to Amsterdam

They take everything horticultural to a higher level in Amsterdam. For instance, these artichokes were for sale at the flower market.



Pure thistle!

There were also artichokes of stone. This fountain was in a canal garden.



Before going to Amsterdam, I thought I would be satisfied with my hydrangea in Rockaway if it flowered blue. The plant is doing nicely, but it's nowhere near as photogenic as this:



Who knew that hydrangeas even came in red velvet? With ravishing blue centers?

Well, at least the wisteria is thriving. I gave it a summer trim, hauling the vines off the roof of the guy next door before they overcame his cable, and cutting back the whips to about one foot or six buds (as per the YouTube wisteria-pruning video recommended by Roy in his Comment, below, under "Pergola Emergency").

Ik Ook

The big weekend in Amsterdam is over: it’s Monday and wash day and recovery day. Baby Dee is on her way home.

Bimhuis was full for Dee’s show last Saturday, with a few people even sitting in the aisles. The name Bimhuis is apparently associated with legendary jazz musicians in Amsterdam, but the original venue is no longer. Bim is now housed in a box sticking out the side of a theater-arts complex reached by pedestrian ramps behind the train station.

The stage was big and arched out into the audience. There was a grand piano and a concert harp on it. Before the show, a stagehand laid a sheet of paper at each musician’s place. Good—Dee had a set list. She and the band played a radio show in the afternoon, and Dee had been worried that it would deplete them for the evening. She entered alone (as I remember) and went straight to the harp, doing one of her early songs, the one about asking the bird why it sings (“The Robin’s Tiny Throat”?). The musicians joined her gradually: John Contreras, the cellist; Alex Nielson, a ginger-haired Scot; and Joe Carvel, a bassist. I would not have thought that percussion would lend itself to Dee’s music, but Alex does some special little martial thing on “Early King,” and he has a feathery touch with the cymbals that is very effective. Plus he’s fun to watch.

This was the best-choreographed of any of Dee’s shows that I have been to. Often, with a harp, a piano, and backup musicians, it can be crowded onstage, and clumsy for Dee to move between the piano and the harp, but she swanned across the stage (insofar as one CAN swan in flipflops), soaking up the applause. She did a combination of early songs from her first album (“He’s Gonna Kill Me When I Get Home” and “So Bad” ended the first set), some of the great, driving songs from “Safe Inside the Day" (“Teeth Are the Only Bones That Show,” “The Dance of Diminishing Possibilities”), and love songs from the new album that will be out this winter (“A Book of Songs for Anne Marie”). Dee also did “April Day,” a beautiful song that makes people in the audience sigh with pleasure. (She doesn’t do it often.) She was in good voice.

Between songs, Dee gave us a Dutch lesson. Her favorite expression in Dutch is “ik ook,” which means “me too.” She also taught us “lekker” (“delicious”). A person can get pretty far in Holland with lekker and ik ook.

On my way to the bar at the break, I was accosted by Alexander and Andre, a Dutch artist-manager duo, dressed to the nines (or even to the twelves), who been sent as emissaries by my friend Ella Arps (she couldn’t make it). Alex and Andre bore gifts for Dee and me. I opened mine: it was an exquisite print, from a series called “Aladdin’s Dreams,” of a well-hung contortionist. (Dee will have gotten something in the same vein.) There were some other people there I knew, too, who congratulated me on my wisteria.

Dee did “Big Titty Bee Girl (From Dino Town)” and, thrill of thrills, as an encore she did “Pisspot,” the song she wrote with my mother. You can never tell, with Dee, whether she will leave the audience laughing or crying. I was glad that this night she left us happy.

When the show was over, the stagehands drew back a curtain at the back to reveal the port of Amsterdam.

Baby Dee in Amsterdam

Baby Dee played a terrific concert last night in Amsterdam, as part of the Holland Festival.


Hooray!

Fessing Up

The trouble with hoaxes is that once you've posted a picture of someone else's wisteria and claimed it as your own, who will ever believe that you grew this lovely yellow iris?



Now I'm waiting for the hydrangeas, and while they are making up their minds what shade of blue to be, I'm off to Amsterdam, where Baby Dee is playing the Holland Festival.

A few weeks ago, I was passing the Giant Virgin store, or whatever it's called, in Union Square and noticed that it was closing and they were selling the fixtures. So I went in and got the bin divider with Baby Dee's name on it. I was going to buy it, along with the last copy in stock of Baby Dee's compilation disk, but they refused to sell it. The divider was part of the fixtures, and only a manager could determine its price. What's a sister to do? I trudged back to the "B" section of Rock & Pop and returned Dee's album to the shelf, put the divider in my bag, and walked out disconsolately. Yes, not only do I perpetrate wisteria hoaxes on the World Wide Web and sneak into movies as a senior citizen but I am guilty of petty larceny.

I'd post a picture of my trophy, but it's not very photogenic. It's just a cheap piece of black plastic with the name "Baby Dee" on one side and the words "Hunky Dory" on the other. But who knows? When Dee is famous, it may be worth something.

Garden Angel

When last I wrote, I was pleased to have such a lush display of wisteria blossoms, but secretly worried that the flowers were too heavy for the branch, or the bungalow, to bear. I've gotten a lot of suggestions for pruning and pergolas (thanks!), but there was nothing I could do until I got back to the beach for Memorial Day Weekend. Fortunately, my neighbor ACE had taken it upon himself to train the vine. Doesn't it look fantastic?

Pergola Emergency

Can you almost smell it? I was trying to describe the smell of wisteria to someone last weekend . . . and all I could come up with was "floral." Later I thought, Candy? It's light, sweet, with just a whiff of decadence. My bumper crop is desperately in need of a little support—I had no idea that flowers could be so heavy.



The rosebush is a simple beach rose, kind of blowsy-looking (as well as out of focus), but pure in scent. The bush is covered with buds for the first time—I don't know what I did right.