This dry wash next to an apartment complex has become the forlorn home to shopping carts dragged in from all corners of this neighborhood. Where do they go from here? Are these the future mobile homes of street people? Is there reward money paid for their safe return, or will heavy rains drag them to the sea?
Orange
Ah, wintertime…cold wind, snow, rain, freezing……NO WAY – this is Phoenix, Arizona, and we’ve got oranges ready to pick. For the next two to three months, we have a near-endless supply of juice oranges that we will stock up on for breakfast. The lemons and grapefruits are also starting to drop from their branches – fresh winter citrus will definitely be missed should we one day move away.
Once a Year Cat Food Shopping
So there we were, checking out cat drugs, not antibiotics, dewormer, or anything so mundane; I’m talking about the good stuff. The kind of drug that makes cats googly-eyed, meowing loudly, and generally looking as though they are having an encounter with their cat god or even multiple deities. Suddenly, a guy in a long dark coat brings our attention to the oversized packages of food in the next aisle, where we see this: 20% More – FOR FREE!!! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT??? This is such a profound bargain I gave serious thought to changing Caroline’s diet from a pure vegetarian meal plan to a Gourmet Flavor…….ok, yeah, I know, I’m getting carried away.
It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Costco…
Just after Thanksgiving, the Christmas decorations go up in earnest. This year will not be your average ordinary Christmas; it’s going to be a Costco Christmas. Throughout the neighborhoods of Phoenix, hardly a street has been missed where old Saint Big Box has failed to put down the oversized snowglobe, Sponge Bob, or inflatable 80-foot-tall Santa Claus.
Great Grandfather Kurchoff
The two guys on the left are the Famous Kurchoff Brothers – Rudy and Herman. Herman is in the middle; the guy on the right is unknown. The brothers were famous for their circus and sideshow act, where they were the first daredevils in America to speed on motorcycles at death-defying angles inside a round steel cage. Herman is my maternal great-grandfather. Thanks again to Photoshop and Neat Image for repairing this old photo.
Atom Heart, Anton, Caroline, Olaf, John
Early in 1990, with our Digiview image digitizer connected to our Amiga 2000, we grabbed this photo of Uwe Schmidt (Atom Heart) on the left, Anton the skull, Caroline Engelhardt (to become Caroline Wise 4 years later), Olaf Finkbeiner, and that’s me, John Wise in the back row. This photo of the day prior to a recent scanning only existed on a piece of paper printed on a dot-matrix printer, the original file is lost in time. Photoshop and Neat Image helped in bringing this poor-quality image back to life.