The Jazz Player?

Barry University was one of my biggest clients for about twenty-five years. I watched and documented the change from an all girls Catholic college to a fully integrated co-ed university.

At this point I have no clue as to who the pianist might have been, whether she was a lay teacher or one of the sisters who'd opted to stop wearing the white habits they'd all worn when I first started there. For some reason the public relations director wanted photographs of her. I liked this one the best.

It was taken in November, 1989 on Kodak T-Max 400 film with a Leica M2 and 35mm f/2 Summicron lens.

Happy Birthday Jonathan

June 24th is my son Jonathan's birthday. He's 33 years old, the same age that I was when he was born.

As I was sorting through the contact sheets a few weeks ago looking for pictures to post on thepriceofsilver I wondered what would it look like if I scanned the contact sheets, then cropped out a few frames, made them bigger, and posted the images. It might be interesting to see several shots in a row, as they were shot! I decided not to "clean them up" or increase the contrast. This is the way they look.

In the top picture Stephanie is teaching Jonathan to eat solid food from a spoon. Below that Patty is playing with him. She now has grown kids of her own.

Last night she called after seeing some of these pictures posted on the blog. She wants to get some prints. "For the memories." I'm thinking maybe I should tell her to come over and print them herself. When I first met her she was a student at Barry College taking a photography class. She wanted to use my darkroom for a special project she was working on. That was close to forty years ago. The sink, the enlargers, everything is where it was back then. She might even enjoy doing it!

Elena's New Baby Brother Jonathan

1976 was the "Bicentenial Year", the two-hundreth anniversary of the birth of our nation, the United States of America. High school students painted fire hydrants to look like little Revolutionary War soldiers. There were lots and lots of parades on the Fourth of July, Independance Day, and fire works made sleep next to impossible that night as well as the night before.

1976 was also the year my son Jonathan was born, a Bicentenial Baby as they were called. Here he's being held by his loving older sister Elena who was five at the time. Next to her is our friend Patty Ho-Chan. She was a student at Barry College and staying with us at the time. Born in Guyana and raised in Freeport in the Bahamas, her dad was East Indian and her mom was Chinese. She was raised Anglican and Barry was a Catholic shool. This being South Florida she ended up marrying a Jewish guy from Israel and had two daughters, but one passed away from leukemia.

Patty lives nearby but now calls herself Pat. Lately she's gotten interested in politics just like Elena and me. She calls me Big Brother and I call her Little Sister. Elena never calls.

Click on the photo and it'll get big enough to see.

Barry College Library

Barry College Chapel on the cover of their alumni magazine Barry Mark