The Mothers

Not Losing, Winning!

Mayor Christine Moreno

Howard Neu was the mayor and he'd asked me to chair his re-election campaign. He'd appointed me to the Planning Commission. I declined chairing the Commission but accepted the vice-chairman position. I had way too many things going at the same time. I'd helped him form Task Force 101, also known as The Mayor's Economic Task Force. Then twenty years ago he suggested that I run for John Haggerty's seat on the city council. Running against an incumbant didn't exactly seem like a good plan but he said that he'd help me raise money and endorse me. Why not? I figured, I'll give it a shot. I went to the city clerk's and filed to run for Haggerty's council seat. Within a day or two I heard that Haggerty had decided not to seek re-election.(Did Howard Neu know something I didn't?) I was in! With the mayor backing me I was unlikely to draw new opposition.

WRONG! Next thing I hear is that Howard Premer, the owner of radio station WKAT, had filed for the seat. Now things were getting tough. It would be difficult to raise the kind of money that Premer could just write a personal check for! I considered dropping out until somebody told me that Howard Neu was now backing Howard Premer, not me. Supposedly in exchange for a weekly radio talk show. This was WAR! Never piss off a scorpio, and I was pissed big time.

A few weeks later my wife Claudia and I were attending a Chamber of Commerce dinner at the Miami Shores Country Club. We sat with city attorney Will Splitstoesser and his girlfriend, a young good looking barely out of law school attorney, Christine Moreno. Her father was a realtor and very involved in the city but Christine hadn't been. Christine was sitting between Will and myself as we discussed the upcoming election. Suddenly she asked "How come nobody is running against Howard?" At exactly the same tme, as if we'd rehearsed it, Will and I both turned toward Christine and said in unison "Why don't YOU run?"

Come morning and I started getting phone calls. They were all "Did you hear that Christine Moreno went to the city clerk's office and filed to run against Howard Neu?" A plan formed in my evil scorpio mind! I must admit that the plan likely resulted in my losing the council race by a narrow margin, but even with all his money Premer won by a very narrow margin. Right after the votes were tallied he told me that up until the last precinct was counted he wasn't sure of the outcome.

Getting back to the mayor's race, which is where I'd invested way too much time and effort, a friend who was familiar with the city's politics and the major players, but whose voice wouldn't be recognized by the Miami Herald reporter (this was before caller I.D.) called the reporter almost every day with more juicy morsels about the mayor. No deeds truely illegal, but enough off track to raise serious doubts about him, along with whom to call to follow up on the items. The day before the election the editor at the Herald wrote something like yes, Christine Moreno was young and inexperienced, but there were too many doubts about Howard Neu. They endorsed Christine. She won. She became North Miami's first,and so far only, female mayor.

A year or two later Howard Neu packed up his law practice and moved up to Broward County.

Cheap Film

I was thinking that it was about time for Walgreens or K-mart or CVS or SOMEBODY to have a sale on cheap color film. I was about out. My fridge had milk, eggs, and butter but no film. The inserts in the Sunday paper had this CVS 200 film at $4.99 a four pack. They also had faster films on sale, but I'm so used to doing the color shots for this blog with 200 speed film I decided not to spend extra for faster film.

Supposedly Fuji makes this film for CVS, and they probably make Walgreens, K-mart, and several other chains film. I grabbed five packages, paid the clerk, and was on my way. Between cheap rebranded Fuji film and Merna's expertise at my local Walgreens one-hour we get all these gorgeous color shots here on thepriceofsilver!

And then there are the times when I use neither film nor camera, like this picture of the film boxes. It was just too easy to put the film boxes directly on the scanner's glass and then scan the image of them.

Hey! Take A Look At My Nuts! (both of them)

I seem to attract the most oddball females! But they do fascinate me, no doubt. Janis, in the top pictre, is my neighbor, thin as a rail, stone deaf, and widowed going on two years now. She hasn't gotten past John's death yet. She comes over for coffee and wants my Sunday paper when I'm through with it. Once or twice a week I take her to the drugstore and the supermarket. In this photo she was looking for a new toaster. She's terribly shy and won't let me photograph her so I have to sneak the occasional picture from afar. She always puts on a bit of eye make-up, some lipstick, and asks if her hair looks alright.

In a way, though, it's kind of fun. She reads lips, but getting her attention first is the challenge. People look at us funny when I yell "Hey Janis!" good and loud, but they catch on fast when they see her turn her head, cup her hand around her ear, and reply "What did you say? I can't hear you!"

I met Janie at an outdoor last-Friday-of-the-month free jazz concert outside of city hall. She thought it was great that I was Jewish. I've never dated Jewish girls. She was living in an apartment building a few blocks away, the same one where my ex, Claudia was living when I first met her a couple of decades ago. Seemed safe enough, right?

What I didn't know was that the apartment building was now a halfway house for recovering from whatever they were recovering from type people. Then I discovered that she's fixated on food. She knows by heart the menu of every restaurant around, how giod the food is, what the service is like, the house specialty, and if we should happen to drive by a new place she always wants to check it out. A time or two each week she calls to find out what my plans are for the weekend. In between it's "Let's get together for coffee" and if we do she never shuts up.


Thankfully she moved to a halfway house up near Fort Lauderdale. Now the tavel time and the price of gas is my excuse. She's not happy about it but she accepts it. That doesn't stop her from calling though.

A 1964 Contact Sheet (And That's A Wig)

I spent the winter of 1963/64 in Boston freezing, taking some photos, partying, working at Zeff Photo Supply in "The Photo District" on Bromfield Street, and being thankful for public transportation. Besides freezing on that bike the streets would get slushy during the day and the ruts would freeze solid at night. Once you got in a rut you were like riding down a railroad track! You couldn't turn out of it. A friend of mine helped me schlep the little Honda up a flight of stairs where it remained until spring thaw. The other shots were in and around Borton and cambridge and no, I don't remember any of their names. It's all there on the contact sheet.

These days almost everybody shoots color with a digital camera, downloads the images into a computer, ant the little pictures on screen are called "thumb nails". This woman was sitting in My usual Starbucks looking over her day's take while her daughter looked thoroughly bored. She seemed very intrigued with the Roleiflex I was carrying, but even that didn't seem to pull her daughter out of her boredom. We talked for a few minutes about how she really likes black and white, and that digital pictures in black and white never seemed to look as good as those shot on film.

I left her with my card, suggested that we might meet up for coffee sometime and chat photography, but that she should finish her editing and get that poor bored little girl home as soon as possible. The girl smiled, but first she wanted to get one more look through the Rolleiflex's finder at the backwards image.

Better Than A Contact Sheet? Hang in there!

The caption of this photo of the woman with the laptop computer ties in with the photo immediately above.