Mar 20, 2010 by Naomi.

Cameras that took pictures on film that required processing in chemicals are rarely ever used anymore. For at least four years I’ve used a digital camera from which I could take the chip with the photos and plug it in my computer and transfer the photos into dated folders. Handy when searching when I can determine the year and approximate month. Goody for me. However for years and years before digital I did use film that required chemical processing so I have oodles and oodles of negatives that I want digitized. I’ve taken care to keep the negatives cool and clean in the hope they do not lose the image sharpness. Only recently I saw an ad for a little machine that would take the image from the negative and put it in digital form. I’ve never tried it but it always sounded pretty nifty. Thinking about it was as far as I got. Well Jerry ordered one and I began to go through my boxes of photos to figure out just what see how much work there will be when I get the opportunity to try it out. When I say boxes I am not joking. If I stacked the envelopes in one row they would take up several feet. And that is just the envelopes. The prints have been placed in albums with dates and labels. How exciting is the prospect of turning the negative film into digital for storage. Something wonderfully positive from a negative.

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Mar 20, 2010 by Naomi.

The book “Denialism” by Michael Specter with a subtitle - “How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives” was on Danny’s coffee table when I was visiting and I wanted to read it again to look at the chapter headings. The fear of science to me is difficult to believe, knowing that without science our society would be in deep doo doo. But somehow people more quickly believe the wrong things mostly because they put more trust in a the rantings of a notable personage than they do in facts. Inoculation against small pox is a big deal. The fact is it has saved millions of lives over the centuries. Yet inoculations are now noted as the cause of autism. Heartbroken parents of autistic children are looking for a scapegoat. Those inoculations the kid got at six months! Of course there’s the culprit. So there is a movement to convince parents to skip those life-saving facts. Never mind that autism occurs in families around the world that know nothing of inoculations. The first signs of autism occur about the same time that pediatricians advise inoculations. So the doctors are in league with the pharmaceutical companies! Think about the logic in that. Researchers are working on the source of the affliction. Evolutionary biologists are finding proteins, hox genes, and switches in development and have discovered how genetics influence the present. They may find the speck on the helix where a glitch occurs. Maybe the source will be discovered. That does not mean autism can be prevented. It certainly does not come from childhood inoculations.

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Mar 20, 2010 by Naomi.

Doubtless this dates the birth of millions, yea billions, of people worldwide even in this century. What it marks for me is the birth date of a sister-in-law, Ethel. She was born in 1912, third girl child who had ten years of experiencing what it was like to be the family baby with freedom to be herself. I can tell you how competent a ten-year-old girl can be as a baby sitter when the next babies arrive. In one’s own family the position is really a surrogate mother when the woman of the house is swamped with household chores which in the 1920s included planting, weeding, harvesting, and preserving an acre of vegetables as well as the care, feeding, and butchering of chickens, geese, and a pig. The chickens butchered, plucked, and cooked at least weekly for dinner, the geese butchered, cleaned and roasted for special occasions. And do not forget that every feather was saved for mattresses, pillows, and quilts. But I digress. Ethel learned the homemaker skills by osmosis if not by necessity before she was charged with the keeping of the next babies - boys. The first boy was a testament to a father’s virility reaping favors just because he was first, the second getting leftover chores just because he was second. But because Ron was the last baby and had rheumatic fever, he and Ethel formed a special bond held between them forever. When I married him she transferred her affection and attention to me and we coffeed away many happy hours while babies came and grew. Ethel pops into my memories when odd details crop up and I remember her dearly, how she appreciated going to Reno with us to challenge the one-armed bandits or joining us in our camper for an outing among the back roads.

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