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Check out the first line of this article.
Actually we Goolsbee’s excel at creating international incidents. We’re just pretty low-key about it.
Oh wait, now we’ve been granted the ne plus ultra of American political scandal terminology – it is now “Goolsbee-gate”
I feel… special.
I’m on vacation this week, so now you know why I haven’t written or posted much lately… nor should you expect much for a few more days. 🙂
My parents had the good sense to retire to a ski town in Colorado, so every year we try to make time in the winter to visit them. We’re there now and though we have Internet access here (finally!) I’m too busy having fun to post daily as usual.
Things should be back to normal again next week.
Above: The boys at Tannenbaum Tree Farm circa 2002. Our home is off beyond the treeline behind them.
We moved out to the boonies 10 years ago not long after our return from the UK. We were pleasantly surprised to find many tree farms around our house. The first few years we just walked to the nearest of them, Tannenbaum Tree Farm to pick and cut our holiday tree. For several years we’d walk a path through a 44 acre wood that existed behind our property and exit right at the tree farm. The family that ran Tannenbaum had created an ideal world for the acquisition of Christmas trees. A log shelter with a warm fire in a cast-iron stove. Hot cider. Candy canes. Some small decorative gifts for sale. Custom-built tree-netting stands between the shelter and the parking area. Just grab your saw and go pick your tree. They had a great assortment of VERY nice trees. Like I said in the beginning we would walk over and cut our tree and carry it home. One year we even did it while it was snowing. It was sort of magical.
It was obvious that they treated their customers like family and many people would drive from as far away as Seattle every year to pick their tree. People there were always smiling and happy, even if it was wet, or cold, or snowing. Magical.
Above: Sue & Nick at Tannenbaum Tree Farm circa 2002
Then the 44 acre wood was clear cut and some developer built a housing development on it. So we would all just pile into the old pickup truck and go drive ‘around the block’ (though that is about a 2 mile drive) to Tannenbaum and select our tree. They would always ask if we needed it netted, and we always answered with “No, we live just over there” (pointing east towards the mountains).
This year we received a post card just before Thanksgiving from the Tannenbaum Tree farm that said they were no longer selling trees, and thanked us for our years of patronage. One of our little family traditions was lost!
This weekend the family decided that we had to get our tree now, so they pulled me away from my computer and we went off in search of a tree. All the Christmas Tree Farms that littered the neighborhood have all vanished! Every last one has been replaced with housing developments. We saw a sign advertising one on the road down to Granite Falls, so Nick & I went there. Boy were we disappointed. Scraggly little trees that only Charlie Brown could love, and all of them outrageously priced. I can’t recall paying more than about $40 for a tree and Tannenbaum, and in fact most years it was less than $30. Not a single tree at this other place was less than $35 and all the reasonably good looking or tall ones were priced between $75 & $150! Not only that but it was all out in a muddy field behind a travel trailer. Not what I would remotely call “magical”.
We gave up on tree farms… ok tree farm.. and drove into town and grabbed a tree at the grocery store. A fine looking and quite tall Douglas Fir. (Logical since one fell over in our yard exactly one year ago!) I paid $20 for it.
On our way home Nick & I drove past Tannenbaum, and their trees are there, but they are closed. Out in front is a Snohomish County Land Use Permit application sign. Obviously the site of another housing development, coming soon.
It is official: The Boonies have devolved into the Suburbs.
We’re finally getting around to sorting through the 1000 or so pictures that Chris brought back from Chile. Unfortunately one of his memory cards was lost in the mail, so some 450 or so images were lost. 🙁
We do have a few good ones, among the ones that did make it here. If you are dying to look at them all, you can sift through the haystack here. The first 15 pages are repeats from the last time I posted. Chris’ camera broke shortly after he arrived in Chile, so many of the images are blurry. Add to that his photo skill inherited from his mother and you have well… what you have. 😉
But for your viewing pleasure here are a few needles from the haystack. As soon as Chris has the time to tell me what they are in more detail, I’ll post captions. (note: As of 8/14/07 they now have captions provided by Chris!)
I picked up Christopher at Sea-Tac today. The above photo is one I snapped as he emerged from behind the security cordon at Alaska Airlines’ D-concourse.
It was wonderful to see him again.
Here he is talking to his mom on my cell phone while we wait for his bag.
More info later… right now we’re just enjoying being reunited.
I stumbled upon this on my hard drive. It is from a few years ago. Nick had a school project where he had to make a video about “how to” do something. He chose “get ready to go skiing.”
We set up a camcorder in the family room and Nick had all his ski gear and narrated choice bits of info about the equipment and such while I read him the outline, ran the camera, etc. After we gathered the footage we sat down and created/edited his movie, which we then put back on tape and sent off to school with Nick.
I deleted the actual main part of the movie for presentation here… but left the even longer collection of out takes I compiled at the end of it. To me, that was the most enjoyable part of the whole project. 😉
Two packages arrived from Chile this week. Mostly books which Christopher has read and doesn’t want/need to carry them back home in his luggage. It also contained a memory card from his camera, filled with almost 500 pictures. Unfortunately, it appears his camera was damaged not long after he arrived in Chile, and the focussing mechanism isn’t working well. Most of the photos are blurry. 🙁
There are a few choice ones though, and I’ll share them here.
Above: Christopher about a week after he arrived in Chile, and camping on the beach with his host family
Above: This is Gerardo, Christopher’s host father. “Yayo” as he is known, speaks very good English and he and I have conversed a lot over the past several months. Gerardo was an exchange student himself, in North Carolina, when he was in high school, so he understands a lot of what Chris is experiencing. I owe a great debt to Gerardo, as from what I can tell he is doing a wonderful job with Chris.
Above: This is Yayo and Lorena. Lorena is Chris’ host mother. She speaks about as much English as I do Spanish, so the one time she and I spoke on the phone was… hilarious. We both spoke slowly and loudly, and neither of us understood a word, other than “Christopher” and “Gerardo”. 😉
I have bought Chris another camera, which I will send down to him next week, along with his memory card. I think I also need to provide a little long distance Art Direction, as most of his shots fail to capture what people want to see. Of course, I look at my photography when I was 17, and it wasn’t much better. But then again, I had some people teach me how to compose and what not, so now is the time I guess. I do really like the shot at the top here of the sand and sun. It is a very evocative photo for me. Looking at it in context of the pictures taken at the same time though, you can see that it is a happy compositional accident… just one image in a series of sweeping panorama shots. The key to good photography is SEEING what is in the viewfinder as a complete image. We’ll see how that concept can be transmitted 10,000km via email!
I will post the rest of Chris’ photos from Chile later on today, with a password protecting them, to share with friends and family.