My Old School Part 2

The taller, central portion of the top photo is the front entrance to Neville High School and has come to be the "symbol" of the school; it's most recognizable trait. The tower is engraved on the side of all of our senior (12th year) rings.

The bottom two photos are of the front of the school's football stadium (American football).

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Update: I'm doing OK after surviving my myelogram. I'm down to a very sore back and some bad memories now.

The poor x-ray technician that was in there to assist the radiologist with my myelogram and to take the x-rays once he was satisfied with his dye injections, called to check on me today. I think she had a tougher time watching me go through that four times than I did to actually experience it.

The hard part now is that, for two nights I'm to sleep propped up on my back and my head is to never get level with my body, to help prevent the dye from entering my brain. That can cause a bad headache and I'm miserable trying to sleep in one position.

Thanks for your concern. I appreciate it. I'm doing all right, just really sore now.

My Old School Part 1 / Myelogram Update

These are a couple of pictures of my old high school. I took them when we went back to Louisiana the week after Christmas in December 2006.

This is Neville High School in Monroe, Louisiana. It was opened in 1931, and this past school year was it's 75th Anniversary of being a working high school.

The top two are to give you a good overall view of the front of the school, it's very elegant looking and is aging with lots of grace.

The bottom photo was taken on one side of the school, and is the entrance to the auditorium/theater. As a teen, the carved faces above the doors fascinated me. You just don't see schools built with this kind of detail and class any more.

I was blessed to have been able to attend school here. The education I got there prepared me well for college.

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Myelogram Update

Had I known exactly what I was in for yesterday, I might not have gone.

Due to four past surgeries, the radiologist had a tough time finding an opening through scar tissue to my spinal cord.

What normally would have been one set of shots to deaden the area, and one really tough one as he pressed the needle through the muscles to the spine for the tap, turned into 4 sets of shots and spinal taps. He couldn't get the dye to "flow" as he wanted it to until the fourth try.

The half hour procedure took one and a half hours because he had to do four complete procedures until he had the dye in my spinal column, with the dye flowing far enough up and down the column to see what they wanted to see.

After that was a CAT scan and then 4 hours of observation, which amounted to me laying there and the nursed coming in every 15 minutes for blood pressure and to ask if I was getting a headache.

He said I have a big bone spur pressing the nerve that gives feeling and strength in the outside half of my left leg, which is exactly where I hurt. Now it's up to the surgeon to decide what, if anything, he can do. I see the surgeon again in a couple of weeks.

It turns out that they want me (and anyone having this procedure) to be at rest for a minimum of 48 hours.

I'm doing ok, once the procedure was over and they left me alone, I've done pretty good. Just lots of muscle pain from the four places he put that honkin' big needle through my back muscles.

I should be back to work on Thursday, barring the headache they are hoping for me to avoid. The Dr. removes a bit of spinal fluid and then puts the dye in there, trying to avoid a drastic change in the pressure. If the dyes reaches and passes through the blood/brain barrier, one may get the grandaddy of all migraines, if he misjudged a bit, and the spinal column/fluid pressure changes the headache could come then as well. I'm hoping to avoid that more than they do.

Anyway, that's my sad story.

Me And Ol' Blue

This is a self-portrait I did in around 1983. That would make me 20 years old in this photo.

I had been out for an afternoon of photographing things when I decided to put the camera on a picnic table and take a picture of myself. I didn't have a tripod with me. Looking back, I'm glad I did. This is the best picture of Ol' Blue that I have.

Ol' Blue was my Dad's truck and got passed on to me when he upgraded to a new vehicle. It was a 1975 Ford F-100 Custom. Ol' Blue was finally traded in years after this photo, when it had 165,000 miles on it. It felt like we took a beloved family pet to the vet to be put to sleep.

This is a slight crop from the original 35mm slide. I usually post most photos full-frame, but there was some dead space in the photo, behind me in the right of the image. I cropped that out.

The old me; I'd sure like to have that 20 year old body back again.

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It's Sunday, and that means I've also posted photos on my other blog, if you care to see them.

Black And White #3

A couple more photos from my time in B&W photography classes when I was in college the first time in the early 80s.

Nothin' special, I guess I was in an artsy fartsy mood when taking these.

Canon AE-1 and 50mm f1.8 lens. I'm pretty sure they were on Pan-X (125 ASA), but I didn't look to see for sure when I scanned them.

Pink And Yellow Sunset

These two photos are a couple of my 35mm slide scans from 1983.

The first photo was taken over an across the street neighbor's roof, from the front yard where my then fiance (now wife of 22 years) and her family lived. I cropped this one slightly, because in the original slide, you can see the top of the neighbor's roof, and I cut that out.

Lest you think those colors are unreal or a photoshop trick, I put up the second photo, taken on a different evening in a different location. It has almost the same colors. Same city, Monroe, Louisiana, but the second one is looking over the Ouachita River (pronounced WASH-it-aw), about 6 miles from where the first photo was taken.

Belive me, I'm not that good with photoshop, and I use Photoshop Elements anyway.

On my writing blog today I posted a story of my year as a high school yearbook photographer, along with three photos from that time in my life, if you care to see them and read the story. It's a post that would have fit in well on this blog too.

Black and White #1: Movement

The top photo is of my Dad, chilling on the couch at home.

The bottom one is of Younger Brother, bunny hopping on his BMX bike on the street in front of our house.

I consider my home town to be Monroe, Louisiana. I went to Neville High School there, and also my first degree is an Associate of Arts Degree from Northeast Louisiana University (now the University of Louisiana - Monroe).

When I was in high school, I was a photographer on the yearbook staff. I learned black and white darkroom techniques and developed photos for the yearbook at school.

Later, when I was in college the first time, in the early 1980s, I took a couple of B&W photography classes for fun. These two photos are scans of B&W negatives from one of my college photography classes.

Taken around 1982-1983. Canon AE-1, 50mm f1.8 lens, Tri-X.

Ouachita River

Today's photo was taken in 1982. It was taken on the banks of the Ouachita River, from West Monroe, Louisiana, looking at downtown Monroe, Louisiana on the other side. (Ouachita is pronounced WASH-i-taw)

I've had bouts of insomnia most of my life, but once I had my camera, I'd just head out and take night photos. I'd never done it and all of the experimentation paid off.

This is one of my all-time favorite photographs that I have taken. Not spectacular, I know, but it's my home town, and that makes it special to me. Canon AE-1, 50mm lens, Kodachrome 64.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I saved and bought a Canon AE-1 in the summer of 1979. I've taken thousands of slides with that camera. I still have it, and a few years ago I sent it off to be serviced and had new mirror foam and foam seals installed. The mirror has never squeaked on it like some Canons have, this camera has been a champ and has been perfectly dependable.

I knew a guy the first time I went to college in the early eighties at what was then Northeast Louisiana University (now University of Louisiana - Monroe) who was a Nikon guy. He was completely insufferable and a total camera snob. He snickered at my AE-1 while holding his Nikon FM, but I think that since my AE-1 still works perfectly after 28 years and working in rain and banging it against things, I think I made a wise purchase.