Mindless musing about Photoshop and all the pictures I lost last year

I miss Photoshop almost as much as all the pictures I lost in the great double-hard-drive-calamity of May '10. I kept it installed on my external drive because it hogged a lot of space on my already over-stressed computer and when the drives tumbled to the ground, so did my capacity to do anything with Photoshop. I was never very adept at it, but I had a couple of cool plug-ins that I used somewhat frequently. I've been unsuccessful in trying to reload it on my computer- there must be remnants of the previous install remaining and even though I have an honest, real, paid for version, (granted two versions old now), it won't let me re-install. Even worse- those neat plug-ins I used to use? Can't find them anywhere.

*waa-waa* Sad trombone.

a macro of a leaf after rain + random thoughts as of late featuring black dogs

Going through old pictures again since I'm having trouble finding anything to shoot right now.
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How about a worthless trivial sidebar that has absolutely nothing to do with this photo?

Been fascinated with black dog legends lately… Black Shuck, Cu Sìth, and Garm, the Cŵn Annwn, Barghest, Gytrash and the like…both the stories themselves and how the folkloric origins of the legends later became corrupted once Christianity took hold particularly in the British Isles and Scandinavia. It's this turn that makes me especially engrossed by the few variations of these stories post-Christianity that allow for the benevolent nature of these spectral beasts- the protective dogs that accompany lone women travelers and the visions of these dogs that appear as warnings rather than indicators of inevitable danger. Not all the stories attribute them to hellhounds, animalistic grim reapers, cannibalistic shapeshifters or demonic portents of certain death.

My first pet was a mongrel black dog, Sam, a stray dog of approximately 6 months old who adopted *me* when I was two and a half years old. He showed up one day at my father's station and we became instantly inseparable. I have no idea how much this fact plays into my interest in this myth, but maybe it does. He most definitely was an awesome dog who loved me as much as I loved him. He tried to follow me to Kindergarten when I started school and would wait by the gate for me after school when I started riding my bike in first grade. As a child born on Friday the 13th, and a little weird anyway, I was always absorbed by supernatural folklore so from a pretty young age I was aware of the concept of witches having familiars- but never being a cat person, I thought it was just as appropriate to have a black dog as it was to have a black cat.

So, back to the point. I've been kicking some story variations around in my head based on the black dog- but I know myself well enough to know that I can start a story but it doesn't mean I'll ever finish it. Instead, and even better, I want to find a black dog to photograph. I think maybe this is why I've turned to photography in part in the first place- I may be a wordy person with a lot of ideas, but I tend start writing a lot of things that I never finish. With photography- snap! you've got it; you're done...

This being said: wanting to photograph something and actually finding that *thing* to photograph- the difference between wish and reality- therein lies the wide chasm of dull disappointment. Hmmm.

Oh well. *shrugs* The good news is that after a couple of weeks, I finally have an idea. Now I just need to find a big, black dog. An English mastiff would be perfect. *sigh* I wish I knew where to find one.

The daughters from Poltergeist

Dominique's story was so pointlessly tragic- to be strangled to death by an ex- boyfriend. I took a couple of seconds to breathe in while I stood on her grave to think about that. I thought especially about her brother, Griffin Dunne, and how often he might think of her to this day. She's in the ground within a few yards of Natalie Wood, who was a friend of the family. Her father, author and journalist Dominick Dunne, just passed away a few weeks ago.



It saddened me to find that Heather's angel had either fallen off her crypt or was stolen. Her vault faces west and the sun hits that wall like a solar panel, so perhaps whatever once adhered it to the concrete melted off. Despite all the other graves we saw that day, I was only disappointed I had no flowers to leave on this one.

Truman Capote is interred in a vault caddy-corner to Heather. In the ground close by is Don Knotts. I'd like to imagine them as being lively, boisterous uncles to her in the afterlife.


Unlike most of the graves I take pictures of just because they're old or look "cool" or whatever, these two actually mean something to me.

Poltergeist was really my first "scary" movie. It was a big deal with my friend Jessica and I. Granted, we had watched most of Halloween with her older sister Jennie but it wasn't nearly as engaging for us because it didn't have a little girl our age to identify with- that's what makes Poltergeist the sentimental winner. Both our families had Showtime back in the Dark Ages when it took at least a year for theatrical releases to come to cable, and when they did, they would be played over and over again for one month. However, Jessica's parents bought something magical that year- a VCR! Her brother and sister taped it and Jessica and I watched it repeatedly the summer we turned eight, in-between swimming in her swimming pool and being tormented by Jennie.

[It was always Jennie; she was mean. She made us drink Jacuzzi water and took sick pleasure in making Jessica cry while French braiding her hair. We once made two copies of a newspaper called "The I Hate Jennie News" with smelly markers on construction paper which we threw rolled up in the driveways of two unsuspecting neighbors. (It was too much work to hand write a third copy, or to continue the publication for that matter.) On the other hand, her brother Jeff did come at us with a butcher knife once- Jessica giggled during the entire "attack" as he ran around the room, pretending to be diabolically angry, slamming into the walls, just "missing" us. Not having siblings myself, I wasn't sure what the hell was going on or if I should be scared of the sharp shiny thing even as he ran about in jest. I tried to slip out into the hallway which made him come after me, so I ran and hid in one of their bedrooms until they said I could come out. Hey! I was eight years old at the time. Cut me some slack!]

I didn't learn what happened to Dominque Dunne until Heather O'Rourke died, probably because I was too young at the time. I do remember her absence in the second one but thought nothing of it, mostly because the second Poltergeist movie was pretty lame in comparison to the first. (Even as a child I had some standards for cinematic quality. I mean, Poltergeist 2 was no Annie, after all, and couldn't light a candle to E.T.) When Heather died, though, it hit me hard: I was 12 and she was my age. That's when it dawned on me that even kids could...just...die.