Author: Mark Alexander

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Quote Of The Day

Republicans who are asking why they keep losing elections are like the guy who walks into the ER with a nail in his head, asking why he has a headache.

A party led by a rapist that believes it can fix its problem with women by attacking Taylor Swift, with weird little creeps like Mike Johnson as a public face in Congress, that has no serious policy, that has decided to abandon decades of support for freedom in Europe to back a genocidal dictator, a party that is 85% white in a 59% white country, a party that has decided higher education is a gateway drug to Socialism, that believes public health policy should be set by random freaks on the internet and not doctors, a party that is still fighting cultural wars of gender politics the rest of America ended a decade ago, a party that has replaced American optimism with anger and fear of the future….

Is there really any question why this party is losing?”

—Stuart Stevens

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Black Holes

Beautiful.

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Time Marches On

But it’s still sad.

I’m finally starting to organize my photos using MacOS’s Photos application. For as long as I’ve been an Apple user, I’ve eschewed using it, much preferring the year/month folder stricture I’ve used in Adobe’s Bridge (and more recently in XnView). But a few weeks ago I was trying to locate a specific image and could not for the life of me locate it.

I kept thinking I could’ve put my hands on it almost immediately if I had organized my photos by year and then by general subject…and the proverbial light bulb went off. Photos! Photos can do that. So, following the methods described in this video, I started importing my photos, going from 2023 backward.

I ran across several photos of the house my family lived in for my grade/middle school years, and out of curiosity—instead of actually driving over to the place—I went on Google maps and street view and saw what it was looking like these days.

As I said, it was sad—especially to see the one-epic Australian Bottle Tree that had graced the front yard from the time we moved into the newly-finished home in 1963 reduced to the 60 year old husk it had become.

November 1963, shortly after we moved in
1964. Not exactly sure of the month, but judging from the angle of the afternoon sun, probably mid-summer. Notice the tree.
Five years after we moved in. The tree has been very happy in that location.
Three years later, summer of 1971. The tree is very happy. It’s sibling at the far right was actually planted at the same time. The olive tree went in a couple years later.
A few months later, about a year before we moved out.
July 1998 was the first time I’d been by the place with a camera. I had returned from SF for a visit and had to drive by.
Another shot from that same 1998 visit.
2006. Sometime after 1998 the tree was apparently struck by lightning (not surprising considering it was the tallest object in the neighborhood). The beginning of its—and the neighborhood’s—downfall.
And here it is in 2024, 61 years after the house was built and we moved in. Funny thing is, the same family has lived here since we moved out in 1972, but it’s obvious a newer generation has taken over and upkeep has gone to hell.

Over the years, both my sister and I have fantasized about buying the house and returning it to its former glory (or gutting it to the studs and updating it to 21st century sensibilities like have been done with other houses in the neighborhood). But it’s just a pipe dream, and with the area currently in a downward spiral, it will remain just that.

The house still pops into my dreams now and then, taking place mostly at night, and mostly involving being invited in by the current owners to see what’s been done to the place.