Dreams, Moments, Travels
From last winter, dad and daughter on the sled in the snow. Caroline and I once tried sledding here in the sand but it didn’t work out very well. There are a couple of reasons I really liked this photo, first, Katharina’s cheeks are so rosy red making her oh so cute. The other reason, look behind them on the left, what is that kid doing laying face down with his sled over him?
Did you save us a piece? Here’s our far-away niece showing us the braided bread she made all by herself just for Caroline and me. Ok, she probably did not make it for us, maybe she didn’t make it all, and she certainly did not save us a taste. Love the socks, I wonder if mom made them.
This is our niece Katharina on the playground – obviously not in America. I say obviously because if you look, she is running on a spinning wheel, she could hurt herself and sue someone if this were in America. Look at the uneven logs in the background, holes where feet could get trapped, ropes to fall over. It’s a sorry state we have come to that liability insurance, lawsuits, and greed has in part taken some of the fun away from being a child. Fortunately, this little girl is growing up in Germany where she can still skin a knee, run around without a care, and have fun on the playground.
My brother-in-law, Klaus, from Germany sent this photo of two snails dedicated to Caroline from our niece, Katharina. Caroline’s nickname as a little girl was Schnecke – which is snail in German, so it is wonderful that Katharina thinks of her aunt Caroline and has made such a beautiful drawing of her aunt who lives so far away in America. Sadly, we have not yet met Katharina as we have not been back to Germany in 12 years and Caroline’s sister Stephanie, her husband, and daughter haven’t yet come to America. On occasion though we see some very sweet photos of Katharina, such as the ones I will be posting for the next few days. Maybe one day we will be able to convince Stephanie and Klaus to bring Katharina for a visit so she can go to Disneyland, hike a bit of the Grand Canyon, look for bears in Yellowstone, take a dip in the Pacific Ocean and finally meet her aunt and uncle for the first time.
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.
We were barely four months into seeing one another when Caroline and I drove to Deinze, Belgium, and the Futurama Festival to see the Stone Roses, though we were interested in Jesus Jones and Urban Dance Squad, too. I was able to talk my way into free passes after meeting with the Stone Roses to ask about filming the show. Sadly, I wasn’t allowed, but they invited us to their show in Cologne, Germany, a few days later. Also playing on this day on October 1, 1989, were Bad Brains, Brian Ritchie, Buffalo Tom, Hard-Ons, Hoodoo Gurus, The Pursuit of Happiness, and Firehose.
Awesome, just after seeing the band on Sunday, here we were on Wednesday, just up the road in Cologne, on the guestlist for this show, too. Next up, I had to find myself a poster that was being used around town to announce the show, and the venue still had a few; with it in hand, I asked the guys if they’d mind signing it for my new girlfriend and they obliged me with the above. Since framing this, I’ve seen it every day; it brings me back to those heady early days of our relationship when the Stone Roses’ first album came out, and I stumbled upon one of those rare LPs on which I loved every single track.
These were our backstage passes for the Belgian show and are now stuck on the glass of the framed poster. The setlist from that night was: I Wanna Be Adored, Elephant Stone, Waterfall, Made of Stone, Standing Here, She Bangs the Drums, Where Angels Play, Shoot You Down, Sally Cinnamon, I Am the Resurrection.