This came up in my Facebook memories today and so once again I’m banging the drum about it. 

I shared the following post from an ER nurse back in May of 2014. I had my own heart attack October 2019. When the symptoms started coming onto me I didn’t even think about what she’s saying here, I figured it was just a really bad case of heartburn. Until it felt like a horse was standing on my chest and it scared me. Looking back on it, the heart attack was pretty much like she says here, but for the squeezing feelings in my spine and jaw which I did not have.

And that, in retrospect, is interesting because she’s describing here how a heart attack feels different for most women and I am a cis gender, gay man.

It makes you think a little bit more about human biology. And you should. I’ve often wondered about mine. I have small feet for a guy, size 7 1/2 medium, and frequently have to buy from the ladies side of the shoe store where I have learned to look for a women’s size 9 wide. But my hat size is men’s large. Go figure. I have never felt myself to be transgender in any way. I have always felt completely comfortable in my own body, and in that sense of my own maleness. But if the heart attack taught me anything it’s that there is probably some female in me somewhere, somehow. 

So I try to tell this to other gay guys when I can: don’t expect the heart attack, if it ever comes, to feel like the one Hollywood tells you, all stabby. It might very well hit you like it does women. My generation of gay men got it drilled into us that our sexual orientation is something we learned by way of abuse, distant father, dominating mother, fear of women, immoral habits. But no…it’s in our biology. There are probably a bunch of other aspects to that besides sex.

This is why I have sought out care from physicians who are familiar with treating gay men. Our bodies may just be ever so slightly different enough, more akin to females, that our healthcare needs are different. It is entirely possible that drugs work on us more like they do women then heterosexual men. And I can tell you from personal experience, that the heart attack comes on the way this ER nurse describes. More than likely other symptoms in us look more like they do in women.

Both my cardiologist and my GP have assured me that this is how another heart attack, if it comes, will present in me. Doctors are notoriously hard boiled about all this.

——-

A nurse has heart attack and describes what women feel when having one:

I am an ER nurse and this is the best description of this event that I have ever heard. Please read, pay attention, and send it on!…

—

FEMALE HEART ATTACKS

I was aware that female heart attacks are different, but this is the best description I’ve ever read.

Women rarely have the same dramatic symptoms that men have … you know, the sudden stabbing pain in the chest, the cold sweat, grabbing the chest & dropping to the floor that we see in movies. Here is the story of one woman’s experience with a heart attack.

I had a heart attack at about 10:30 PM with NO prior exertion, NO prior emotional trauma that one would suspect might have brought it on. I was sitting all snugly & warm on a cold evening, with my purring cat in my lap, reading an interesting story my friend had sent me, and actually thinking, ‘A-A-h, this is the life, all cozy and warm in my soft, cushy Lazy Boy with my feet propped up.

A moment later, I felt that awful sensation of indigestion, when you’ve been in a hurry and grabbed a bite of sandwich and washed it down with a dash of water, and that hurried bite seems to feel like you’ve swallowed a golf ball going down the esophagus in slow motion and it is most uncomfortable. You realize you shouldn’t have gulped it down so fast and needed to chew it more thoroughly and this time drink a glass of water to hasten its progress down to the stomach. This was my initial sensation–the only trouble was that I hadn’t taken a bite of anything since about 5:00 p.m.

After it seemed to subside, the next sensation was like little squeezing motions that seemed to be racing up my SPINE (hind-sight, it was probably my aorta spasms), gaining speed as they continued racing up and under my sternum (breast bone, where one presses rhythmically when administering CPR).

This fascinating process continued on into my throat and branched out into both jaws. ‘AHA!! NOW I stopped puzzling about what was happening — we all have read and/or heard about pain in the jaws being one of the signals of an MI happening, haven’t we? I said aloud to myself and the cat, Dear God, I think I’m having a heart attack!

I lowered the foot rest dumping the cat from my lap, started to take a step and fell on the floor instead. I thought to myself, If this is a heart attack, I shouldn’t be walking into the next room where the phone is or anywhere else… but, on the other hand, if I don’t, nobody will know that I need help, and if I wait any longer I may not be able to get up in a moment.

I pulled myself up with the arms of the chair, walked slowly into the next room and dialed the Paramedics… I told her I thought I was having a heart attack due to the pressure building under the sternum and radiating into my jaws. I didn’t feel hysterical or afraid, just stating the facts. She said she was sending the Paramedics over immediately, asked if the front door was near to me, and if so, to un-bolt the door and then lie down on the floor where they could see me when they came in.

I unlocked the door and then laid down on the floor as instructed and lost consciousness, as I don’t remember the medics coming in, their examination, lifting me onto a gurney or getting me into their ambulance, or hearing the call they made to St. Jude ER on the way, but I did briefly awaken when we arrived and saw that the radiologist was already there in his surgical blues and cap, helping the medics pull my stretcher out of the ambulance. He was bending over me asking questions (probably something like ‘Have you taken any medications?’) but I couldn’t make my mind interpret what he was saying, or form an answer, and nodded off again, not waking up until the Cardiologist and partner had already threaded the teeny angiogram balloon up my femoral artery into the aorta and into my heart where they installed 2 side by side stints to hold open my right coronary artery.

I know it sounds like all my thinking and actions at home must have taken at least 20-30 minutes before calling the paramedics, but actually it took perhaps 4-5 minutes before the call, and both the fire station and St Jude are only minutes away from my home, and my Cardiologist was already to go to the OR in his scrubs and get going on restarting my heart (which had stopped somewhere between my arrival and the procedure) and installing the stents.
Why have I written all of this to you with so much detail? Because I want all of you who are so important in my life to know what I learned first hand.

1. Be aware that something very different is happening in your body, not the usual men’s symptoms but inexplicable things happening (until my sternum and jaws got into the act). It is said that many more women than men die of their first (and last) MI because they didn’t know they were having one and commonly mistake it as indigestion, take some Maalox or other anti-heartburn preparation and go to bed, hoping they’ll feel better in the morning when they wake up… which doesn’t happen. My female friends, your symptoms might not be exactly like mine, so I advise you to call the Paramedics if ANYTHING is unpleasantly happening that you’ve not felt before. It is better to have a ‘false alarm’ visitation than to risk your life guessing what it might be!

2. Note that I said ‘Call the Paramedics.’ And if you can take an aspirin. Ladies, TIME IS OF THE ESSENCE!

Do NOT try to drive yourself to the ER – you are a hazard to others on the road.

Do NOT have your panicked husband who will be speeding and looking anxiously at what’s happening with you instead of the road.

Do NOT call your doctor — he doesn’t know where you live and if it’s at night you won’t reach him anyway, and if it’s daytime, his assistants (or answering service) will tell you to call the Paramedics. He doesn’t carry the equipment in his car that you need to be saved! The Paramedics do, principally OXYGEN that you need ASAP. Your Dr. will be notified later.

3. Don’t assume it couldn’t be a heart attack because you have a normal cholesterol count. Research has discovered that a cholesterol elevated reading is rarely the cause of an MI (unless it’s unbelievably high and/or accompanied by high blood pressure). MIs are usually caused by long-term stress and inflammation in the body, which dumps all sorts of deadly hormones into your system to sludge things up in there. Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep. Let’s be careful and be aware. The more we know the better chance we could survive.

A cardiologist says if everyone who gets this mail sends it to 10 people, you can be sure that we’ll save at least one life.

*Please be a true friend and send this article to all you female friends.

The lab beakers and precision scale for my upcoming project to make H&W Control developer arrived the other day. This is good. They should be precise enough I can compare them to the plastic graduated beakers I’ve been using since I was a teenager and see how much off they’ve been all this time, if any. But these are mostly for the project I have going, to make some H&W Control developer after so many decades without.

I’ve been told the raw chemicals have been shipped finally, and should arrive soon. There is one more item on the list I was advised of on the Facebook darkroom page I wrote about previously, which is a magnetic stirrer with a hot plate for keeping the mix temperature good. That’ll help. My arm got really tired with all that stirring the rapid fix ingredients.

Given the uncertainties in getting my workflow developers and fixers these days, being able to mix up my own from the raw ingredients is a good skill to…er…develop. Although mixing my own HC-110 might be beyond my willingness to risk since the raw ingredients for that developer are Holy Shit toxic. But none of this is a one-shot deal. Certainly if the experiment with H&W Control developer works out. I loved that film. To be able to use it again would be heaven.

I took a stroll over to Service Photo just down the street from me to see if anything has changed since Kodak chemistry became available again. But it hasn’t really. I saw some new bottles of Kodafix which is good, but when I went up to the counter to ask about it I was carefully ignored. The stock of film behind the counter was pitiful. The shelves of second hand film cameras now only had second hand digital cameras. I don’t think they care about film photographers anymore.

I remember being overjoyed to see they’d moved from inside the urban core to just a few blocks from my front door. I think they were the last of the good photography stores between here and DC. I can name them all, including the one I worked for briefly, Industrial Photo in Silver Spring. All gone now. Memories. I have to mail order nearly everything now. But at least I can do that.

Something I am getting really good at in my old age is the ability to flick just one single little pill out of the bottle. I practice mornings and evenings.

I put my troubles to the folks on a film photography forum I follow. I figured many of them would have been working with raw chemistry longer than I’ve been working an SLR camera. Got a lot of advice to raise the temperature of my mix water, but one user said I should check my mix again to see if it was still cloudy. He said he usually lets a mix rest overnight before using it.

That was the right answer. I drew a flask out of the brown bottle I keep my film fixer in and it’s crystal clear now. So now I know. Mix and let rest for a bit.

Also, maybe tweak the temperature up a bit regardless of what the instructions say. I thought it was odd they specified 68 degrees. The recipes for H&W Control developer all want pretty hot water (one says 130 degrees, another 140) to start. Lots of advice on that forum to use a bit hotter water.

Also: Kodak Is Making Chemistry Again After All! They’re restarting their process here in the states and most of it is again available on the B&H website. I can buy Kodak HC-110 again! I’m going to ask Service Photo tomorrow if they’ll start stocking it again soon.

And now…

When posting a question to a social media group for their expertise, always expect an answer to a question you didn’t ask.

Many years ago, when I was but a young man, I attended a talk by Ansel Adams at Georgetown University. That Ansel Adams. He gave a wonderful talk about his approach to photography and how he came to develop the zone system, and I ate up every word because he is a grand master of monochrome photography. After he gave his talk he opened it up for questions from the audience. Bunch of good questions from the students, but sure enough someone stands up with a complex question about which developer was better than another. Adams replied that he knew many photographers had their particular holy waters (his words, and the audience laughed) but (and I’m drawing from memory here) the tools are only a means to an end so don’t focus so much on the tools you lose focus on the end.

Remember when I said the other day that there is religion about hardening fixers? When I posted my question to the darkroom group I said that I was looking for a replacement for Kodak Rapid Fix and that Ilford rapid fix didn’t cut it because it wasn’t a hardening fixer and that is why I eventually went with the product from Photographer’s Formulary. I Knew as I typed that I was going to get a bunch of Why Do You Want A Hardening Fixer responses, despite my question not being about the pros and cons of hardening fixers.

Sure enough.

Bonus points for one commenter saying hardening fixers are only for paper and another saying they are certainly not for paper.

Never mind why. I’ve been doing this since I was a teenage boy, I have a workflow that works for me, and I am not changing it. I’m 70 years old now, and every shot I take is a little more experience under my belt doing the thing I do. I love my tools, my cameras, my workflow. It’s my comfort zone. I’m happy there. Whole. But it’s the photograph that matters. Is it what I meant? Yes? No? Keep working it then.

This morning I mixed the chemicals I got from Photographer’s Formulary I wrote about the other day. I was very careful to follow their instructions on mixing To The Letter. Which was good because lawd have mercy when they said to mix in a Well Ventilated Area because some of it would give off fumes they weren’t frikken kidding!

But I had a difficulty. The powdered chemicals they supplied me with did not dissolve nearly as quickly as the instructions said. At one point the instructions called for patience when adding the boric acid because it would take up to five minutes to dissolve. Try more like 20. All if it was like that except for the liquid ingredients. And I kept stirring the entire time. I used only distilled water, and at 68 degrees as instructed.

What I ended up with was a mixture that never got completely clear. Everything finally seemed to have dissolved but it still has a sight cloudy appearance to it.

So I did some tests with a few small strips of 35mm film I sacrificed for the cause. They seemed to clear just fine but there remained a slightly pinkish tint that should not have been there. That worried me until I realized I was still seeing the anti-halation layer which is normally removed by the developer. Since I was just dipping the film strips into the fixer I wasn’t removing that layer.

For comparison I mixed up my last good bottle of Kodafix that I used for paper processing. The Kodafix working solution I mixed up was pure and clear like water. Those strips came out exactly like the strips I did from the rapid fix I mixed up.

What I mixed is a bit cloudy, but it seems to work. But I would like a second opinion from anyone reading this who is more familiar with mixing and working with raw chemicals than I am. What could have happened here? Why was it taking so much longer than the instructions said to dissolve the chemicals? I mean, several orders of magnitude longer. What could have happened, what could I have possibly done, to leave the mixture a bit cloudy. As I said, I used only distilled water, and I mixed in a clean glass Pyrex dish.

I’ve no idea.

This is not making me feel comfortable about mixing up some H&W Control developer from raw chemicals.

I took a fancy to my cameras a few days ago, went to York to visit some favorite places, finished off a roll of film which give me the urge to start working on the backlog of film in my darkroom waiting to be developed. But it had been a long while since I did any of that and I knew my chemicals were past their expiration date. So I went to my local photography store, only to be told (rather coldly by a young staff member), that Kodak was no longer selling chemistry, and they weren’t interested in ordering the raw chemicals I needed to make H&W Control developer.

(Fuck!) So I began scrambling for any unsold stock, only to find that it was already gone. Now I need an alternative source. Well, long story short I think I’ve found one (two) but it was stressful. I have a black & white workflow that’s worked for me since I was a teenage boy and I really Really didn’t want to have to spend a lot of time and waste a lot of film experimenting to find a new one.

My Go-To developer is HC-110. You make a stock solution from a concentrate and then dilute it further to process film. I used the dilution ‘B’ as a one-shot developer. I have a copy of the Kodak Darkroom Dataguide that had the development time calculator wheel on it instead of the table later editions had. Over those pages I’ve stuck a bunch of Post-It notes with data for Fuji Neopan, 35 and 120, and Agfa Rollei Retro film 35 and 120. I stick a Weston thermometer into the developer, then using the dial I align whatever temperature I see on the thermometer with the number for the film I’m processing and the bottom of the dial gives you the time to develop. Then it’s a brief stop bath, then into a solution of Kodak Rapid Fix. Then wash for thirty minutes.

I found a source for an HC-110 substitute at The Film Photography Project, tried it out on a single roll and that came out to my complete satisfaction. So there’s that. But I still needed a good substitute for Rapid Fix. I took a chance and developed a couple rolls of film using the Kodak product I had which was a year past it’s expiration date, and the result was not wonderful. It worked but I had to fix for twice as long to get the film cleared. So no more of that. I needed fresh.

To that end I ordered some Ilford Rapid Fixer, which came oddly without a top cap (the bottle was sealed). So I made plans to use that, but first I did some research because I wanted to be sure it worked enough like the Kodak product I could just keep to my standard workflow. That’s when I saw it wasn’t a hardening fixer.

There is religion about that. A hardening fixer hardens the emulsion has it removes the unused silver nitrates. You really want to use one of these only on film, it does nothing much for paper. But some people think a hardening fixer is bad for film. Long story short: I don’t. I think it’s Good for film. So now I need to find a hardening fixer that works like Kodak Rapid Fix.

I found a source at the Photographer’s Formulary. They also had and were willing to ship to me (unlike B&H) the raw chemistry to make H&W Control developer (more about that some other time). So I ordered their Rapid Fix with Hardener. Days later they still hadn’t shipped (apparently) so I ordered it again from B&H, which resells chemistry from Photographer’s Formulary (just not all the raw chemicals to make H&W Control developer (later…later…). That came yesterday as I type this.

And it’s…interesting. What I was expecting was the usual two-part concentrate and little bottle of hardener. What I got was…this…

By the way…that’s my basement chest freezer, or as I say when that part of the basement is my darkroom, the table where I put my paper developing trays. Next to it is the dryer which just happens perfectly to be the same height as the freezer, and between them that’s my workspace for doing silver paper enlargements. The enlarger is in the shower stall in the bathroom next to the freezer. When you grew up in a series of small garden apartments you learn how to make every space server multiple purposes. I don’t have enough space in my little Baltimore rowhouse for a dedicated paper darkroom, but I can make that corner of the back basement work as one.

So what I got from Photographer’s Formulary isn’t a hardening rapid fixer, but the raw ingredients for making hardening rapid fixer. All packaged in precisely the right amounts…

…to mix up some hardening rapid fixer if you follow the included directions. I’ve no idea why it comes like this instead of packaged as ready made concentrate, other than maybe with them it’s The Way. But this is good, it gives me some practice for when I get the raw chemistry to make some H&W Control developer.

The end result is you get concentrate and hardener which you then mix together to make a (nearly, they measure in metric) gallon of working solution. I’m going to mix it all up today. I’m told when I add the acetic acid fumes will result, so I’ll mix it up in the kitchen where I can open some windows. Progress report later…

I completely forgot that today is Christmas Eve. I reckon that comes with being solitary and retired.

I could have sworn it was middle of next week. So the plan today was to buy a few groceries this morning and sit back and wait the holiday traffic out. But my street is pretty empty of parked cars and it’s not a workday for most of the folks here I’m sure. Plus, the entire neighborhood actually pretty quiet.

I have this horrible intuition that the main roads and jammed with last minute shoppers, and the stores are being mobbed, and I am not going anywhere until after Christmas.

Spending Christmas as I usually do being a gay guy who has failed miserably at love, and because the family I’m closest to now is on the other coast, by myself. I’ll give myself a nice Christmas dinner at home and try not to drink too much.

I’ve said elsewhere here that I couldn’t make it professionally in the arts because I never had the kind of focus it take. Case in point: just a few days ago I was all about my art gallery, and now it’s pretty much back to the photography.

I have two routes I use for my morning walks, one of which is to zig-zag through the new “luxury” rowhouse development nearby, where the container factory used to be. That development has been a muse ever since they started building it. Today on my morning coffee walk, while going through one of the narrow alleyways between the rows, I saw the sort of slightly cloudy, sun streaked sky overhead I love to work with, and just then it was making that narrow alley look really interesting to my photographic eye.

I had to have that shot. But at that moment all I had was the iPhone. Olay…it can can do a good job with my art photography, I have lots of examples. So I snapped off an iPhone shot just to get it. Then I hightailed it back home and got the Petri out.

I see now I haven’t written about this here, but probably on my Facebook page and I was neglecting this blog. But some time ago I found a Petri FT for sale on one of the used camera sites, that looked to be in very good condition. So I bought it for its nostalgia value to me. The Petri was my first SLR camera, simple and affordable to teenage me, and it opened a new world to me artistically. Now I could precisely compose to the frame in the viewfinder, because now I’m looking through the same lens that will take the photo. It was what you see is what you get, and I could be as specific about composing a shot as I wanted to be. Plus, you could change lenses from wide angle to telephoto, and no matter what lens I had on it I was still seeing exactly when the film saw when the shutter opened. You just don’t get that with any other sort of camera.

When I first got the second hand Petri I ordered I took it to Ocean City New Jersey for an ultimate nostalgia trip. OC became one of my photographic muses back when I was a teenage boy, and it still is. Many of what I consider my best shots from that period were taken with the Petri. Back then I could not afford its native 28mm or 135mm lenses, so those were third party compatibles from Soligor and Vivitar. Now I can, and that is what I shoot with on that camera.

Last summer I took the Petri with me because, perhaps irrationally, I wanted that example of my first SLR camera to see and photograph the land of my birth. I bought it back home to Baltimore still loaded with some Tri-X Pan I’d taken to California with only a couple shots on it. So I had the roll to finish. It still had the 28mm Petri lens on it. I put a red filter on that and gave the camera a fresh battery. Fortune smiled on me and the sky was still pretty interesting when I got back to the rowhouse development and that narrow alleyway, and I finished the roll pretty quickly.

That makes 7 rolls of Tri-X I have waiting for me in the darkroom. I have another partial roll of Tri-X in the Canon F1N that also came back from California. I finish that and it’s an even eight which works out for the four reel tank I have. Still have three rolls of 120 NeoPan 100, three or four of 35mm NeoPan 100 out of the Leica, and five rolls of Agfa Copex to develop when I can mix up some H&W Control developer.

Obviously my inner compass has swung back to the cameras. So it goes…

…even though the old hardware still works just fine.

I’m almost two years retired now, and computers can still take a big bite out of my day. Today’s exercise in spinning my wheels trying to get things work comes courtesy of Apple. No surprise there. It just works…except when it doesn’t.

Apple really Really wants you to keep up to date on not just their software but the hardware it runs on too. And the longer you delay buying their latest and greatest hardware, the more you find that out. And I’m still on some very old Apple hardware, because I need to stay on a very old version of MacOS. And I need to do that, because Adobe makes you rent their software now, instead of offering upgrades. I use the Macs almost exclusively in the art room for my photography and scanned in artwork from the drafting table, and I won’t rent their software for the same reason I don’t rent my brushes, pens, charcoal sticks and the drafting table.

And especially after Adobe screwed me out of 850 for the Windows version of Photoshop that I had, and was able to use for just over two years until Adobe decided the license I had was incorrect and they remote controlled shut it off.

So I’m stuck, but slowly getting unstuck. GIMP does everything I need that Photoshop did for me. The only stickler is Lightroom, but I’m almost free of that too.

In the meantime, if you have an iPhone and you’ve been keeping up to date with the OS upgrades and security patches on that, and you have an older Mac, you are getting more and more distant from any version of iTunes you are running to sync your iPhone with. Especially your music library.

A few days ago I ordered a CD of the Jerry Goldsmith soundtrack to Logan’s Run. I have had the LP version for decades, but only realized I never got a digital version when I wanted to listen to it on the iPod and it wasn’t there. So that CD came in the mail and I put it into the art room Mac, which also holds my iTunes library, and copied it over so I could put it on the iPhone, and the iPod Classic.

No sweat right? I’ve done this hundreds of times before. Then I found the soundtrack to the new Percy Jackson TV series and bought that off the iTunes store since it isn’t currently available on CD. Now I have two albums to copy over to the iPhone and iPod.

The Percy Jackson one actually downloaded to the iPhone as well as my iTunes library. Fine. I plug the iPod into the Mac and it syncs both albums no trouble. Bear in mind this is a Much older piece of Apple hardware than the iPhone I currently have. Then I try to sync the iPhone and that’s where the trouble began.

I plug the iPhone into the Mac, and iTunes says it needs a software update before it will connect to my iPhone. Fine. I’ve seen this before, after every security patch. Apple still supports my older hardware and the older version of MacOS it’s running with security patches. But now I experience a new problem; an error message saying it cannot download the iTunes update.

So I go looking around the net and lo and behold lots of people are complaining about this happening after the most recent iOS updates. And the thing of that is Apple says it should all be compatible with the older versions of iTunes. So their solutions are to either reinstall iTunes…except the version of iTunes you need for the older MacOS isn’t available anymore, even though it’s allegedly still compatible with the current version of iOS…or reinstall the operating system. Because you really wanted to spend an entire day installing MacOS and all your apps and configurations just to copy over some music to your iPhone.

I spent an entire morning today trying this and trying that to no avail, and swearing loudly that I would never put another update on any of my Apple devices ever again. You cannot downgrade iOS…that’s Apple’s policy. Now it seems, I cannot sync my iPhone with iTunes anymore, which means I can’t back it up, in addition to not being able to sync my music library.

Eventually among the wail of pain out there I see a link to a third party program that claims to run on my Mac Pro version of MacOS, and connects to my iPhone to allow backing up, file copy and music copy from the iTunes library. So I download a copy and give it a try. There was trial version functionality which allowed me to prove it did what I needed and I finally got my music copied over. Then I bought a license for it. It wasn’t expensive and it wasn’t subscription only.

This is it. It’s called iMazing and I can verify that it works…at least on my 2010 Mac Pro and iPhone Xs running iOS 17. So now I can make backups of the iPhone and copy music files over. It isn’t automatic synchronization but I can deal with it. They say it will also let you move your music and other files to an iPod Classic, which gives me some security there because I still like that little dedicated music player.

So that was my morning today. How was yours?

I see a hit from Nigeria in my website server logs today. Hopefully it’s that Nigerian prince that wants to leave me money and he’s finally found me.

Hahahahaha…no. More likely it’s Nigerian authorities looking for gay websites to block.

Since Kodak has gone out of the film developer chemistry business now…at least to the degree they sell it to film photographers as opposed to commercial processors…I’ve had to scramble for a source of a good HC-110 substitute. I found it at The Film Photography Project. They sell an FPP-110 developer that appears to be a functional clone of the new now discontinued Kodak product, that is, not the old HC-110 concentrate but the new version that had a limited lifespan. Fine…I worked with the Kodak product once and it behaved like the old concentrate did. So I was hoping this product from the Film Photography Project did the same.

I have tanks that hold 1, 2 and 4 reels of 35mm film. I loaded a single reel of Tri-X from my California trip as a test, and kept my fingers crossed that I wasn’t sacrificing a roll of good Leica shots just to prove the thing I got in the mail didn’t actually work like HC-110. But it was a complete success. So now I can finish off all the rolls I took in California.

Except for the Agfa Copex Rapid, which I intend to develop using the old H&W Control developer recipe. I ordered the raw chemicals for that from The Photographer’s Formulary. B&H didn’t stock most of what I needed and wouldn’t ship half of them anyway. Photographer’s Formulary ships but you had to specify UPS Ground shipping for two of the chemicals, since they’re declared to be hazardous. Most likely won’t get them here until sometime in mid January.

Still need a scale good to .01 grams.

The thing about good fantasy fiction is it’s modern myth making that you can appreciate on many different levels.

I watched the premiere first two episodes of Percy Jackson and The Olympians on Disney Plus as soon as they were released, and all throughout the story I felt an intense kinship with the characters in it and their struggles, so distant in time, age, and circumstance though they were to me. I’m a gay man who came out to himself in December of 1971. I know how it is to become a target for monsters of the human kind when I reached a certain age. I know how it is to be part of a minority that is not safe in the world.  And I know how vital it is for us to have our safe spaces. And given my family background, I know just how it is to feel estranged from my own dad, although he completely accepted me once we were allowed to be together. I didn’t have to fight my way to it like Percy does. But my own dad had…his own issues. Like Percy, it was my mom who raised me, loved me unconditionally, and set a good example for me. At the end of the second episode, I knew just how he felt.

I came to the Percy Jackson books by way of The Sun and The Star, which is about the same sex couple Nico and Will. I began reading the books, in a backwards kinda way, to find out more about the couple, how they met, how they have navigated the world Rick Riordan created. This production feels very much like the Riordan books that I have read so far, and the production values are top notch. Definitely watching the entire thing.

I got Disney Plus a bit over a year ago so I could watch The Mandalorian and the documentary about Disney song writer Howard Ashman. It’s been worth the money to me.

This is making the rounds on certain social media sites…

It’s a good reminder. More than one classmate from my past has surprised me by declining when I offered them a lovely German ice wine as a Christmas gift, and I was embarrassed for making assumptions, especially given my religious upbringing. I think the second time I did that really drove it home: Do not assume. 

People can have many reasons for not drinking. Maybe they’re on the wagon, maybe it’s a religious thing. Having been raised in a Yankee Baptist household, I can appreciate the religious reasons even if I don’t buy into it anymore. Skepticism regarding alcohol is a Good Thing actually. But as is said above, it’s not really any of my business why, and it’s good to keep it in mind during the holidays, especially as New Year approaches. 

I drink, but sparingly. I don’t seem to have the gene that makes beer taste good, and spirits, which I prefer, have always had an exaggerated effect on me. That was great when I was younger because it meant I didn’t have to spend a lot to get thoroughly toasted on good stuff which doesn’t come with a killer hangover. But as I got older it became tiresome. Literally. In my 60s two stiff drinks and I just want to go to sleep. I’m 70 now, and having more than one drink at a time, or one drink on consecutive days, makes me very fatigued. I might also get heart flutters.

I accept this and dole it out accordingly. The point being just because you know that someone partakes it doesn’t mean they’re up for it right then so don’t assume. Ask please, and don’t push it if I say no thanks. I may have already had my couple drinks for that week.

Sweet ice tea is Always acceptable.

Those of you who browse my website every now and then might notice a new link on the main page. It goes to the art gallery I’ve been meaning to put up for years now. This is a place for everything I do at the drafting table that isn’t a cartoon. It’s a gallery for my serious “pure art” artwork…stuff I do to express feelings I need to get out of me.

I don’t have any of my oil paintings up here yet, and not all of it is finished artwork. Some of what I’m putting up there are sketches I did leading up to a finished piece, some of it are pieces that I stopped working on for one reason or another, usually because I got stuck trying to figure out how to move forward with it: unfinished works that I might copy over to the iPad and finish digitally. I’m putting that up because I’m still proud of the work I did, but also because I want to give people an idea of how I work, and that there is no magic to it, just persistence.

The Art Gallery is Here.

Back when I was a teenager and big box department stores were a thing, I used to go shopping, mostly for LPs at the E.J. Korvette’s across Rockville Pike. It was classic suburban car culture retail, with a massive, and I mean Massive, parking lot surrounding a huge store that sold everything from lawn mowers to blue jeans to jewelry and watches to TVs. They had a legendary record department, and I would go there often to browse the movie and TV soundtrack titles. In their day they had a bigger soundtrack selection than anyone else.

I would also browse the book department. One day I saw this paperback title on the shelves and my jaw dropped, completely taken by surprise and completely embarrassed.

I don’t think I was more embarrassed by the Sticky Fingers album cover when I first laid eyes on it. I could not believe a book with thAT title was allowed on the shelves, even if I knew it was obviously not, could not possibly be about…er…those kinds of dicks. I picked it up and looked at the back cover blurb and saw that it was, yes, a collection of pulp detective stories, which I wasn’t much interested in at the time.

I briefly considered buying a copy as a joke. But I was probably still struggling with my emerging sexuality and didn’t want mom seeing it because she was already questioning my lack of interest in girls and my stash of 16 and Tiger Beat magazines.

Time passes, the universe expands, and along comes the Internet and email and social media and and smartphones and this cover became something of a running gag with me whenever the topic of sexting and dick pics came up. The little inner Baptist boy in me will in no way allow the grown up me to engage in online conversations like that. But the Mad Magazine inner tweenager in me loved joking about it with photos of Dick Tracy, Dick Nixon, Dick Clark, and this book cover.

Once, a certain someone down in Florida told me during one of our conversations not to be sending him any dick pics (I’ve often wondered later if he wasn’t actually trying to give me ideas) and I made the usual jokes back at him. Maybe that’s what started our downhill slide. My sense of humor often irritated him, which irritated me.

So when the other day a friend joked when I was bellyaching about Facebook unilaterally removing one of my posts, that I was posting too many dick pics, and I replied with the cover of this book. He laughed, I laughed. And then I began thinking about it more.

I never really got into hard core noir detective fiction but I have loved some of the movies in that genre. After watching and loving the 1975 Robert Mitchum version of Farewell My Lovely, I decided to pick up a random Raymond Chandler book…he was said to be the gold standard of detective noir…and see if I might want to read him.

At the Crown Books in Congressional Plaza I saw and picked up a copy of one of his novels, I forget now which one, and I Just Happened to flip it open to a scene in it where Marlow is roughing up a young homosexual for some information. Chandler writes that the kid tries to swing back but those little queer boys just don’t have the muscle or the skeletal hardness to put up much of a fight.

The contempt was just dripping off the page and I put it back, and never picked up another Raymond Chandler book. But I still love that film version of Farewell My Lovely. I even bought a copy of the soundtrack by David Shire, which set the tone for the movie perfectly.

But the book I often joked about still intrigued me for, perhaps, a different reason: it’s alleged pulp fiction roots. I have long been a big fan of a particular pulp fiction character: The Shadow. I have a bunch of paperbacks, written by Walter Gibson under the pen name Maxwell Grant, with those amazing pulp art covers.

The only other artist to do the character justice was Michael Kaluta in that amazing series of DC comics that are now collector’s items, and really every time he does the character…

The Shadow was the only pulp character I ever enjoyed reading. For some reason I never got into Doc Savage stories, although those are also said to be a gold standard in pulp fiction. But given how much I’ve enjoyed pulp stories about The Shadow I knew I could actually digest pulp fiction…it just had to be good pulp fiction. If that’s not a contradiction in terms.

So after Yet Another dick pics joke about that book I thought, let me actually try reading it. It’s an anthology so maybe I end up hating some of it, but liking others. So I did a little digging and came up with this hardbound first edition in like new condition, for not very much money.

I posted a version of this to my Facebook page, because most of my friends and classmates still don’t seem to get blogs. Now I wait to see if Facebook deletes this post too. Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of social media…hahahahaha…