This photo of Mom, Linda Devoe, is my favorite of her. The finger, the smile, the wink truly capture her joyful spirit. What was the occasion? Her youngest daughter’s wedding, of course.
I previously shared the portrait about two weeks after she passed away on this date (August 5) in 2017. I used iPhone 7 Plus to make that digital copy of the print. Today: Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra. I cropped and edited the Featured Image on the smartphone, too.
My sister who summers in Vermont is visiting with our sister who lives in Connecticut. The older brought her daughter and granddaughter along, for a festive, gal weekend of antique shopping and other activities.
Last night (their time), they rang me, loosened up by after-dinner wine. I am pretty quick with humorous barbs that their comradery and inebriation magnify to states of roaring pandemonium. Honestly, once the laughter starts, anything I say is suddenly comedy club hilarious. “The world is flat!” Explosive laughter. “The cat puked on the rug!” Even loader laughter.
My cousin Dan routinely sends family photos from the 1960’s and 70’s. Few of them are as surprising, and enchanting, as the Featured Image, from 1968. He says that’s a photo of a “bear cub taken in our backyard in Fort Kent”—one of the major Northern Maine towns on the Canadian border.
“Dad later gave it to the Houlton animal farm”, Dan explains. Oh, yeah? That wouldn’t be the first time. In November 2005 missive “Somewhere Between Dickey and Rivière-Bleue“, I tell the story of another bear cub—captured in the Maine North Woods and also sent to an animal farm in Houlton; 1966. So, it definitely wasn’t the same animal.
For several months I knew the day would come when the inevitable could no longer be delayed: Part with the Exerpeutic Folding Magnetic Upright Bike with Pulse purchased from Amazon in April 2013; price before discounts was around $130. I still use the exercise bicycle—several times a week, at least, especially during the colder season.
Letting go was a process of reaching a moment of absolute need for additional space. Our daughter is staying with us, and I have been slowly moving out things stored in my now former home office, which has become her bedroom. The day arrived when the space occupied by the stationary bike was needed for other things.
I believe that yesterday was the first day missed posting to this site since daily publishing started on Jan. 1, 2024. Last night, I drove my daughter to the local emergency room and stayed with her during the short—as in several hours—examination. False alarm. She worried for nothing. On a different day, with more time, I may explain about what.
I didn’t think to take a photo last night, so we’re pulling art from the archive. The Featured Image comes from Apple iPhone XS on Feb. 21, 2021. Vitals: f/1.8, ISO 25, 1/2208 sec, 4.25mm; 11:37 a.m. PST.
For Mother’s Day, our daughter bought Baby’s Breath for Annie. The flowers often accent others and looked kind of lonely in the IKEA TILLBRINGARE pitcher. Molly’s mom has a birthday and roses to fill out the make-shift vase.
I used Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra to capture the Featured Image and companion. Vitals for the first: f/1.4, ISO 160, 1/120 sec, 23mm (film equivalent); 11:16 a.m. PDT, today.
I am not much of a poet, although you can count on me for song lyrics. Difference: One is more structured, set to melody, and tells a story—and I have a knack for the latter. That said, my beloved sister Annette passed away unexpectedly 10 years ago today, and I wanted to give something to her three children—who also lost their father—and to my two other sisters.
So, sitting in the back of our car, I pulled out Galaxy Tab 11 Ultra, opened Google Keep, and wrote them a poem over the next hour or so. The verse is written to be emotive for a select audience. However, thinking about Mother’s Day tomorrow, the poem could be used for any other mum.
We return to my father’s big stash of slides; the Featured Image is from January 1973, according to the date stamp. He used a Kowa, likely the seT R2, to take photos of family, nature, and wildlife. I don’t know all his reasons for choosing the camera but one was the leaf shutter—in each lens rather the camera body. The design was characteristically unique then, and now. In the modern era, leaf shutters are more commonly found in fixed-lens models, like the several series from Fujifilm, Leica, and Sony.
Regarding the photographic subject, this might be the brook that cuts through part of the family farm, which my father gave away, not sold, to the co-pastors of his church about three weeks before his death in April 2024. They sold the property in May of last year, ending the Wilcox legacy started in 1895 by my great-grandfather.
What a sorry lot of siblings we were. Eldest daughter Annette (right) looks the best. The youngest, Laurette, is placid but not exactly enthusiastic. And me—yes, me—looks like I want to be anywhere else but there.
The portrait comes from my father’s collection of photographic slides. My sister Nanette (missing from the photo) and I visited the Old Man at his home in Maine two years ago today. The following month he went into hospice, and he died 40 days later—April 16, 2024. We later learned that via quick-claim deed he gave away the family farm to the copastors of his church. They sold the property 13 months later.
I resumed looking through my father’s stash of photo slides, today. The number of bad shots is astonishing, and the Featured Image is one of them. I share it nevertheless, for what it captures of the 1970s and because the couple are my parents.
Photographer is unknown, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there is none. My father easily could have used a self-timer and tripod to capture a self-portrait. There is no date on the slide, but I would guess winter of ’72 or ’73. My father’s father died in June of Seventy-two. My mother pushed for divorce not long later. They look happy enough here, so I assume this is before the marriage disintegrated. If true, each would be 30 years old.
Oh the moments 21st-Century Kids are deprived of. There is something oh-so nostalgic about Jell-O made with overripe bananas and a cup or two of real cane sugar. That’s what Nana prepares in the Featured Image, which my father would have taken. Date is unknown, but sometime in 1972 or `73 is my guess.
We sure ate a lot of Jell-O growing up in the 1970s. Eater book review “‘Joys of Jell-O,’ There’s Nothing You Can’t Do with Colored Gelatin” claims that at the height of the jiggly dessert’s popularity, 1968, the average American household consumed 16 boxes a year. You should also read: “How the class history of Jell-O came full circle“—Marketplace”.
Two years ago, my sister Nanette and I discussed traveling to Maine to visit our father, whose health appeared to be declining. We made the trip, and visited with him February 17-18. He died on April 16, 2024.
As I explained yesterday, the Old Man left to me a treasure-trove of photographic slides, most of which he presumably had shot. They’re all mixed up, which makes sorting through them kind of a memorial journey—no, an adventure! The current batch is so far from 1973 and ’74, and I have seen so few.