First Ever Digital Group Selfie

JWise Photo of the Day

Uwe Schmidt, John Wise, Caroline Wise, and Olaf Finkbeiner in Frankfurt, Germany around 1990

Back in December of 2005, the first year I was blogging, I posted a scan of a black and white printout of this photo. I told the story of how the digital file was long gone, lost to the age of the Commodore Amiga and the passage of time. The image was captured in 1990 using a method that the digitizer wasn’t really intended for, by focusing on living things that might move during the capture process. Because there was no way possible to manually turn the color wheel to red, green, and blue (which allowed the digitizer to capture each color channel separately) between capturing shots while we remained frozen in time, we picked one of the filter colors and ended up with a black-and-white image. We printed it with a dot matrix printer and somehow that piece of paper stayed with Caroline and me during our move from Germany and then survived 1o more years in the United States. Now here we are, 30 years after we took our very first digital selfie and today Olaf Finkbeiner (the guy on the right) sent me a copy in color. While Caroline never had purple hair, I think this is simply amazing. On the left is Uwe Schmidt (Atom™), then I in the background, Caroline, and of course Olaf. The skull is named Anton and he still resides with my mother-in-law Jutta who has agreed to take him to her grave when she passes. I cannot forget to give credit to Jo Lincke for putting in the work using Photoshop’s Neural filter to help restore such a beautiful memory. And while I cannot be certain, I can at least confidently claim that this is probably the very first digital group selfie ever taken!

Filling The Space Between

JWise Life

Cumbres & Toltec Steam Train running from Antonito, Colorado to Chama, New Mexico

How often does the average person tend to provide specific details regarding events that occurred more than a dozen years ago? This excavation of my own past has been my main task for the past few weeks as I reworked 30 old blog posts pertaining to travels taken from May 15, 2009, through October 17 of the same year.

Jessica Aldridge the killer crab about to pop the head off innocent tourist John Wise at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Maryland

I surely have explained elsewhere on my blog (or on the very indexes I’ve been creating to come up with a comprehensive list of all of our travels) that I’m repairing posts that were thin on photos and details when they were originally created. You see, back in the old days, bandwidth was at a premium, and nobody had time to wait for even five photos to download, so my posts reflected those limits. Consequently, with 1 to 3 photos per travel day, I would have compressed the events of the day into the 3 to 5 paragraphs that accompanied the images.

Caroline Wise and Jutta Engelhardt visiting the Statue of Liberty in New York

So, after our last adventure that saw us up in Williams, Arizona, for a weekend of hiking at the end of July and the fast-approaching date of Caroline’s bunionectomy, I turned my attention not just to caring for my invalid wife but also to my travel index. This index presents a bit of a challenge, though, because to select a single photo to represent a specific day, I need to be certain that I have the best one. All too often, my heart sinks when I review an old post and see its sole image or maybe the 2 or 3 that are there. Sure enough, I checked the photo directory of that date, and when I saw that I shot anywhere from 75 up to 1,000 photos, I groaned under the weight that there was a lot of visual information I had neglected.

Barber Chair at Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

I end up readjusting the old photos that accompanied the original posting and then get busy adding a bunch more. Regarding the 30 posts I worked on in the past few weeks, I ended up adding more than 600 photos from the archive, so we now have a better visual representation of the events of those days. But I can’t just add a bunch of photos without some explanation/narrative that accompanies each new image. In some instances, there was enough information in the compressed paragraphs detailing the majority of the day that I could pull inspiration from, while in some situations, such as our visit to Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, I had a lot of writing that had to be cared for.

Caroline Wise on the Trail to Havasu Falls on the Havasupai Nation in Arizona

That’s what I’ve been working on, and like my previous attempts to make progress on this massive undertaking, I have to take a break from the tedium. There’s a risk I fall into compulsive frantic attention to this task that is taking far longer than I ever imagined. At this point in the index, I’m on day 677, which is a measure of each day that we traveled away from Phoenix, Arizona, since August 9, 1999, and the commercial advent of digital photography when we were able to easily start cataloging our travels. By the way, this index does not include day trips.

The U.S. Capitol building in Washington D.C.

Now, with about a couple of weeks before our next outing, I can turn my focus to other compulsive activities, such as some deeper reading and turning to my synth for some much-needed exploration.

All of the above photos were taken between May 15 and October 17, 2009. Over in the right column under “Other Pages,” you’ll find the links to the evolving index of “Our Travels.”

Going Out to Get Nowhere

JWise Photo of the Day, Travels

Interstate 10 traveling west in Arizona

Just yesterday, we decided with certainty that we’d head out of Phoenix for an overnight somewhere in Arizona on Saturday morning. At the last minute, I worked out an itinerary on the map that would take us west towards the California border and then north. The little two-day jaunt would end in Flagstaff with another visit to Proper Meats + Provisions, where we recently enjoyed the greatest Patty Melt we’d ever had. So we packed up a small bag and got going.

Wickenburg Road out near Tonopah, Arizona

We should have left the freeway at 355th Avenue, but there was no exit, so we took the Wintersburg Road offramp and turned right and right again before reaching 355th Avenue where we needed to turn left off of Indian School Road to head north.

Wickenburg Road at Jackrabbit Wash in Arizona

After a few miles, our road curves and becomes Aguila Road. We were just going along when a horse trailer and Mustang that passed us while I was taking the previous photo were heading back the way they came. We thought this was strange and that maybe they’d forgotten something, or could this just be a coincidence of being a different horse trailer and Mustang? Obviously, something was glitching in the matrix. Then, not 2 minutes later, we learned that it was, in fact, them. They had decided that they weren’t going to attempt crossing this mess on the road. Something about the mud and debris flow didn’t smell right; it smelled downright awful. No matter, we turned around as there were other ways to get to where we were going.

Indian School Road in far west valley of Phoenix, Arizona

Instead of getting back on the 10 freeway, Caroline noticed that Indian School Road runs along the interstate until 411th Avenue, so we’ll take it just to keep our trek off of that ugly road. Hmmm, come to think about it, I had Caroline text me a message as we were leaving Phoenix regarding my utter disdain for our freeways. It read like this, “Freeways are like the average American, fat and bloated with generic franchised, gluttonous places to indulge our worst inclinations. There is nothing to see, no character, and the billboards, like people’s outward appearance, display slogans offering a peak in the height of one’s stupidity.”

Yeah, take that, you stupid ugly freeways with inconsiderate road-raging asshole drivers; we are opting to take the byways to places the mass of turds will never know on their way in a hurry to who knows what. We are the real elitists above the antics of conformity because we don’t travel the way idiots do…

Muddy intersection of Salome Highway and 491st Avenue west of Phoenix, Arizona

…Until we are the idiot. Transferring from the north side of Interstate 10 to the south side, we were able to pick up Indian School Road again, and well, everyone knows that Indian School Road is a big paved affair, so we were going to skip more freeway and enjoy the peace and quiet of a truly rural drive while everyone else zips along lightning speed. Little did we know that only a few miles on the pavement would end, but things looked manageable, so we soldiered on. We knew that some miles down the road, just south of I-10, Indian School intersects with Salome Road, which is exactly the road we want that will bring us to Eagle Eye Road and, subsequently, Aguila. There would have been nothing much in Aguila to see, just some old ruins of motels possibly, and then we’d turn around back towards Wenden before hitting Hope, Bouse, and Parker. From the Colorado River, our plan was to drive over the dam coming back down through California to Vidal Junction up towards Needles, near where we’d cross back into Arizona for a drive up the Oatman Highway, a.k.a. Historic Route 66. There were other plans from that point on the road, but when we reached the intersection of Indian School and Salome and needed to turn right, this mud hole put an end to our road trip. We were defeated and hungry by now, so we turned around.

Caroline Wise reading from a Kindle in Phoenix, Arizona

We were driving back towards Phoenix. With an hour and a half before we’d reach home, Caroline broke out the Kindle to read us some more In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust. We are currently in the volume titled The Guermantes Way, which at the exact spot we are means we are 46% through this 1.2 million word book. By the time we reached Bethany Home and 16th Street where we shared an overpriced burger with garlic fries, we got to 47% of the book finished. As for the burger joint, Caroline also had a beer, I had nothing to drink, and our bill with a $5 tip came to $40. Maybe we would have been better off staying in to be everywhere within ourselves inexpensively than to have gone out to get nowhere. But on the plus side, we got to spend some quality time together in the car, so all in all, we had a great little adventure.

Das Boot

JWise Life

Caroline Wise with Das Boot in Phoenix, Arizona

Witness this woman experiencing sunlight for the first time in days. Not only that, but she’s making an appearance in Das Boot. No, not the famous 1981 German movie titled Das Boot featuring the smoldering actor Jürgen Prochnow (her words), but the giant black thing on her left foot. As you know from the previous post, Caroline recently had surgery to remove a bunion, and today was her post-op check-up and bandage change, where we got to see firsthand the incision site and the bruising across most of her foot.

X-ray of Caroline Wise's missing bunion in Phoenix, Arizona

Now, the bone needs to grow back together. While you can’t see it in this image, there’s a screw holding things together. The screw is in there because they had to cut the bone all the way through. I asked the doctor about the overhang of bone and the pyramidal shape on the right and he explained that the body will repair those as healing progresses. She’s so happy with the results so far that we made an appointment for December to take care of the right foot.

Horny Toed

JWise Life

Caroline Wise's foot has a bunion

My wife’s foot has (had) a horn. It protrudes like a giant barnacle off her left foot, just next to her big toe. This type of protrusion arrives with a cost, not one of magic ability, at the expense of something else; the cost is pain. The prominence that exists there is better known as a bunion, and she’s to the point that it must go.

The bunion, not to be confused with Paul Bunyan, is a kind of thorn that, as it presses into her shoes and hiking boots, is pushing against other foot bones, making things wonky. While Willy might enjoy things being Wonka(y), my wife is serious about walking, and being able to do so into the future means her foot parasite must be sacrificed to the surgeon gods.

So today (that having been August 4th), before the sun rises and after an anti-bacterial body wash, without food, coffee, or aspirin, we arrived at the surgery center at 5:30 a.m. for the moment the evil will be extricated, a piece of metal in the form of a screw will merge with her bones, and her 4 to 6 weeks of healing will all begin. To add some drama, a monsoon storm made an appearance and it was raining as we three (Jessica had come over from San Diego) pulled up to the facility entrance.

Of course, this means we are sacrificing no less than a couple of journeys that had been on the itinerary, but hopefully, by early September, even if it means we must go slow or use a knee-scooter, we’ll be back on the road. And if this all goes well, we’ll opt for her to have the right foot exorcised of its demon bunion while we’re still in the same insurance calendar year in order to save money for make-up adventures we’ll be denied while Caroline is an invalid.

X-ray of Caroline Wise's bunion in Phoenix, Arizona

Regarding recovery, a lap table was ordered last week, and I’ve given her a small handbell to summon me when her needs requires assistance because that’s just the kind of husband I am. I can only hope she doesn’t milk my generosity any more than is absolutely necessary. And about this poor-quality x-ray, we wanted a digital copy but had to photograph the doctor’s monitor in order to see what the bunion looked like pre-op.

Well, that was then, and this is now here on a Sunday afternoon three days after the surgery. Everything is great, at least in our view. Only one hydrocodone tablet was taken, and that was very late on Thursday evening; other than that, the discomfort has been absolutely manageable. Tomorrow, before lunch, we have a post-op appointment with her doctor, who will unwrap the bandages to inspect how things are progressing. So far, so good, and the little bell I supplied her never had to be rung once as I’ve been here for all of her major needs…except when I’m off at the coffee shop writing.

First Time Voter

JWise Moments, Photo of the Day

Caroline Wise voting in an American election for the first time. Phoenix, Arizona

Exactly 60 days ago, on Friday, June 3rd, 2022, Caroline Wise became a U.S. citizen, and today, she voted for the very first time in America. She was mailed her ballot, but at least for this first vote, I knew she’d have to vote in person, and as this is a primary, I’ll wager that come November, she’ll want to vote in person for the general election, too. That’s about all I can really share about us stopping in at a nearby grade school for the occasion; maybe Caroline can share some of her thoughts?

Caroline here: I’ve lived in the States for 25+ years now, and for most of that time, my joke was “lots of taxation, no representation” because, as a resident alien, I couldn’t vote. And while I could conceivably have been voting in German elections, I decided not to since I don’t actually live there and didn’t feel I could properly assess the options. When you are a German citizen living in Germany, you are required to vote. Since the powers that be know where you live (you have to register your home address along with your tax information), they send you the invitation automatically. Nowadays, you probably have more options for absentee or early voting, but back in the day, I would show up at a local school, get a simple ballot, and put crosses into the circles with a pencil.

So, as a new citizen, I am excited to exercise my right to vote, even if this was just a primary election. I had waffled over dropping off an early ballot too long, so the plan on the day of the election was to go a little farther out on our morning walk and head to Paradise Valley Community College, which the election website stated was our closest polling site. However, on the way there, we saw volunteers setting up a polling site at Sunset Canyon Elementary, which made the process even easier. There was no line, and the check-in process was easy. We had told the folks there why this was my first election and received congratulations for my newly acquired status. Once our ballots were inserted into the counting machines, I even felt a bit emotional, which I had not anticipated. I felt proud about passing another milestone on the way to being a “real American.”