Nifty50

I spent Saturday morning at a CDP meetup at Graceland Cemetery in Chicago. Founded in 1860, Graceland is one of those places that we in the Midwest think of as incredibly old, but if it was located in London the locals wouldn’t have noticed it yet. The surnames on the graves can be matched to virtually every landmark and street in the city, with the possible exception of 63rd. The cemetery serves as something of a macabre tourist destination, to the point of handing out celebrity maps to those who’d like to pay their long-overdue respects to historic figures such as George Pullman, Louis Sullivan, and Marshall Field.

Given the unlikelihood of scoring an autograph from one of the aforementioned dignitaries, I decided to skip the tourist map and meander alone across the cemetery grounds. October is the best time of year to be poking around by yourself in an aging cemetery, and the mood would have been absolutely perfect had the sun not come a-shinin’ through about 20 minutes after I started walking.

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I’ve been a little hesitant to write about this because I’d prefer to keep this site more or less lighthearted. On the other hand, if I’ve had a bad experience with a product or service, it seems kind of unfair to keep it quiet only to have someone else run into the same thing. And on the third hand, I hate to come across as a crankypants, but here we go…

I recently ordered a filter from Adorama–a retailer based in New York. Obviously, the company has been around for quite a while, so someone must be happy with them, but I wasn’t. For those who want to skip to the end, I did eventually receive my package, so you can count that as one weight lifted from the shoulders of the world.

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More hello. Nice title. This is why, as a writer, I usually try to come up with a title for an article after I’ve written part of it. What I really want to talk about is my photo class, but I also thought that I should somehow work in a bit of background on why I’m doing this blog, and what I think someone might gain by reading it. So, pulled in eight directions at once, I decided to inspire myself with the most insipid story title in history. More hello. Ah well. Having built my box, I will now attempt to design something that will fit inside it.

I’m taking a photo class, you see. If I had the foresight to know that I’d want to blog about it say…a month ago, I could have fired up this site and regaled you with grand stories about my adventures during the first three weeks of my class. Instead, I begin my tale in medias res, during Week 4. You and I will both just have to go on with our lives pretending that nothing of any import happened during the first few weeks. In a year, you’ll be swept up in the storyline and have forgotten all about the fact that you missed the introductory episodes, at least until you access the bonus materials on the DVD.

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