Monday, February 10, 2025

Ronald Reagan's Dolphins, and a Cat Named Bob Dylan


I didn't leave the house at all yesterday. The weather was grim -- damp and drizzly, cold and cloudy -- so I stayed inside and read "The Wager." I also did all my usual minor housekeeping and plant maintenance. And I dug around a little more in my photo archives.

As it turns out, it's very difficult to tell whether all my photo CDs have been moved to my hard drive. But everything I checked had, in fact, been moved, so I'm taking that as a good sign.

Above is a piece of street art I found in Brooklyn way back in 2007, depicting leaping dolphins in a circle around Ronald Reagan's nose. Here's the original Reagan photo, a pretty famous one. I'm not sure what the art means, if anything, but it's visually intriguing, isn't it?


And this is me, on the roof of our family home in Florida in 2007. Every once in a while we'd have to climb up there and rake the leaves off the shingles. Otherwise they'd pile up and my mom was convinced (probably correctly) that they'd rot the roof.


And finally, here I am in New York City with two other bloggers in 2007. Some of you may remember Reya, in the middle, who had a couple of blogs including The Gold Puppy, named after her beloved dog Jake. She hasn't blogged for about ten years now, but she posts regularly on Facebook -- which I suppose is blogging, in a way. She can still be found in older comments on my blog, and in some of my posts like this one about our blogger May Pole gathering in 2008.

And on the left is Janine, whose blog Tangled up in L'Heure Bleue was a combination of personal writing, Bob Dylan fandom and perfume reviews, with photos featuring her cats. Some of the cats -- one of whom was named after Bob Dylan -- even had their own blogs, as I recall. I used to hang out with Janine a bit but I haven't seen or heard from her in years.

You know, it's interesting -- the 2000s seem to collapse like a telescope when it comes to the passage of time. The year 2000 seems not that long ago, doesn't it? The '70s, '80s and '90s are very distinct decades in my mind, but the 2000s are a muddle. I don't feel like fashions have changed much, or that life is all that different now than it was a quarter-century ago. We now have AI and streaming television, but that's about it. Maybe the years seem to streak past more quickly because I have now lived so many of them.

Anyway, that was a blast from the past!

Today, back to work -- but it's a light week for me. Thursday and Friday are parent/teacher conferences so the kids aren't in regular classes, and though I'll be at work, there won't be much to do with no kids around. Wednesday is only a half day. Woo hoo!

54 comments:

  1. I'm constantly amazed at your ability to persevere with the blog and always find something interesting to write about, even when you're sure it's boring, it never is.

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    1. I'm glad you don't think I'm writing boring posts. Sometimes I'm not so sure!

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  2. There's an old song called "Up on the Roof" and I thought of that when I saw you up there. We have gutters that need cleaning, fancy a trip downunder?

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    1. Oh, yeah, I know that song! If you pay my airfare I will gladly come and clean your gutters. :)

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  3. Come down off that roof Steve! Life's not so bad. Maybe you just need some counselling.

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    1. I doubt I could have hurt myself falling off that roof unless I dove head-first.

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  4. I agree with you about the 2000s just being a muddle and the decades before were always more distinct. I wonder if the growth of social media has anything to do with it. Now that we and everything is so much all kind of "out there" we don't actually absorb things in the same way.

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    1. Hmmmm...that's an interesting theory! Maybe it's harder to leave things in the past now, because people and events stay with us through our online lives?

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  5. Aside from the big change of moving here to the highrise from a free standing house, yes, the noughties didn't seem like much. Will the music of the 2000s be remembered like that of the 80s and 90s? I think not.

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    1. I couldn't even tell you much about modern pop music. I've heard of Taylor Swift but I don't know a single song of hers.

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  6. Interesting dolphin art. Too bad about the Reagan face behind it. The photo of you on the roof is a great visual memory to have and that final photo with all of you on that blue background is wonderful. We often talk about the year 2000 as if it was recent and are then shocked to realize it was a quarter of a century ago.

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    1. That blue building always made for interesting photography. As I recall it was almost straight across town from my apartment, somewhere around 29th street and Ninth or Tenth Avenue.

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  7. The "noughties" were eventful for me, but not in a good way. Redundancy from a well paid job, uncertainty for a period then a new job which I enjoyed for a while until new management took over and made life very uncomfortable.
    Probably best forgotten now!

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    1. Hmmmm...sounds like the experiences of some of my friends right now! (The ones who work for the US Federal government.)

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  8. The only thing that really breaks up and separates the 2000s for me is the invention of cellphones. I think I got a flip phone in 2005 and then my first "smart" phone in 2010. Other than that, it all seems like a giant muddle.

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    1. I think cell phones were happening even before 2005. I got my first one around then and as I recall all my friends had already had one for years before that.

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  9. It is surprising to realise that the 21st century is already a quarter gone. Nine of my family members were born in that first quarter.

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    1. Isn't it amazing? It just doesn't seem like that much time has passed.

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  10. I still use a flip phone and some of the last years seem highly distinct to me. Sometimes there are events one cannot forget despite the desire to do so. I am sorry you lost touch. And, no, FB is not really blogging at all.

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    1. Yes, there have certainly been big events for all of us, I suppose (the death of my parents comes to mind for me). But as a whole the last 25 years seems much more compressed. Don't you find that time sort of collapses as you get older? I think it's just a function of having lived so many more years.

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  11. Time seems to collapse as you get older. But my own life this century was distinctly demarcated by family and work events, more like catastrophes. The current decade is pretty tumultuous, too.

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    1. Yeah, just because time seems more compressed doesn't mean significant things aren't happening!

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  12. Sometimes I look or read something from 2000 or so and I have to remind myself that it happened an entire generation ago. Now I feel old.

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    1. It's astonishing to think 2000 was so long ago. Remember Y2K? And it seemed so futuristic at the time.

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  13. I feel the same way, the early 2000's are a blur and I can't believe it's already 2025.

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    1. Aren't we supposed to be conquering other planets by now and flying around in glass bubbles?

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  14. The 80's and 90's were periods of growth and opportunity. I think people were happier. 2025 is starting with a bang (big bang) and lots of chaos. The challenges today are unlike anything we've seen before.

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    1. I agree -- I think people WERE happier in the '80s and '90s. Particularly the '90s, which were a good decade despite Newt Gingrich and Monica Lewinsky.

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  15. Was that a flat roof? Who decided that flat roofs were a good idea in Florida? You were a good son to get up there and rake those leaves, though.
    Nice picture of blogger friends for sure.

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    1. It's actually not flat, it just looks that way from the angle of the photo. Yeah, flat roofs in Florida are a horrible idea. (Pretty much anywhere, actually -- up north they bear the weight of heavy snow!)

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  16. The early 2000s for me were about getting some recognition for the pate de verre cast glass I was doing, getting into good galleries, being taken to important shows, on the verge of recognition by collectors and then 2008 happened and it all evaporated. Probably just as well.

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    1. I don't think I fully appreciated the severity of the 2008 meltdown as it was happening, even though it eventually led to the loss of my job at the NYT.

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  17. That art piece is very unusual. It makes me wonder about it's meaning. More fun photos from the past. I think your mom was smart to keep those leaves from piling up on the roof. I agree about the 2000's. They don't seem as distinct as the 70's, 80's and 90's.

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    1. I wonder if the art HAS any meaning. Maybe someone was just being funny.

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  18. I think for the kids styles change a great deal . For us oldies things stay more or less the same. I go back and listen to the old music. If I live long enough , I might listen to today's music which won't be modern.

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    1. It's true that we're less attuned to fleeting changes like fashion. I'm still wearing many of the same clothes I bought 20 years ago!

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  19. It's a odd feeling to think about the bloggers who have gone exclusively to Facebook or those who used to comment and have now gone away. (especially those with whom we had a bond, or thought we did) Relationships are transitory, I guess--perhaps that's even more common when they're on line? I love the dolphins but without the nose!

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    1. It's hard to maintain any relationship across time and distance. Doing so when they're Internet-only -- and then someone cuts off contact by stopping blogging or some other activity -- is almost impossible in the long term. I guess it's a bit like having close work colleagues. You may or may not ever see them again after you leave that job.

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  20. My blog has changed as much over the years as the folks who commented on it. I only have a couple of "originals" left!

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    1. My blog is so different now than it was in the beginning. I was afraid to say much for the first couple of years I blogged.

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  21. I'm glad you get a light work week for once. I loved the old photos, too. You're right about the 2000s. Seems like the only things that have changed since then are big shoulders for women (or was that the 90s?) and men's shorts! I'm sure there are more things but being a fleece-and-denim person, how would I know?! Very interesting art installation. I have NO idea what it means!

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    1. I feel like the '80s were the era of shoulder pads for women. Men's shorts changed in the '90s when Abercrombie got so popular and they tended to be longer, cargo-style shorts.

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  22. Reya! I'm glad we're still FB friends - she is such a thoughtful writer (if a little woo woo, and you can tell her I said so - ha!).

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    1. Oh, she'd be the first to agree that she's woo, I think!

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  23. I like the dolphins but not the face behind them!

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    1. Ha! And yet I recognized the picture immediately.

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  24. I think technology is what blended the 2000s. We all got into our computers and cell phones and that is what gives everything forward of 2000 a "sameness" while the decades before it we see as more distinct.

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    1. I think you could be right. Technology really has homogenized so much.

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  25. It is fascinating but somewhat sad to see former friends disappear. Today was another one for me when I learned that the author Tom Robbins had died at 92. He wasn't a friend, per se, but I loved his writing back in the 70's. Sadly, I had lost touch with it in the intervening decades. So it goes.

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    1. You know, I never read Tom Robbins! I don't know how that's possible, when I was such a fan of Brautigan. I should try some Robbins sometime.

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  26. Thank goodness for parent/teacher conferences - lol. Actually I used to enjoy those, as a parent, because I liked having my kids home for a half-day (that was all we got), and because when I went to see the teachers my kids always got good reports. I was lucky. Anyway, I'm glad your knees will get a break!

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    1. I think a lot of teachers enjoy them as well. It is a good opportunity to touch base and get things out in the open.

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  27. A lighter working week than usual feels like a gift, doesn't it!
    Interesting collection of photos you have there. I can't even begin to imagine what the artist wanted to say with the dolphins circling Ronald Reagan's nose.
    Yes, the 70s, 80s and 90s were distinctive in my life, too. Childhood, teenage years, young adulthood. The last 25 years have indeed whirled by, but when I think of all that happened (in my life as well as in my country or on a larger scale), there is enough in those years to fill an entire century.

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    1. Maybe that's why those decades seem more distinct to me -- I was younger and going through more defined developmental stages?

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