Our Daily Sykes #96 – Grand Coulee Dam from the Rear

Published on July 30, 2010 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments

Jean also took a photo of the rear of Grand Coullee, repeating an Asahel Curtis view of the canyon before the dam. We will go looking for that "then-now" soon for another Sykesaddendum. (Click to Enlarge)

This look at the Grand Coulee Dam also from the rear shows work-in-progress. The bridge across, or along and above, the spillway is not completed. This scene may also show the remnants of an orange peel lying in two curling parts on the dirt at the bottom. Perhaps.

Skype's look to the unfinished front, and showing the ten portals or gates that let the river run through the dam before it began generating power in March of 1941, ahead of schedule.

An earlier - somewhat - construction view recorded from the bridge.

Our Daily Sykes #95 – The Sykesmobile

Published on July 29, 2010 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment

Why, we wonder, did Horace Sykes stop and back his post-war Chevy with the swept tail nearly into an axle-high ditch at the side of a ploughed Palouse (probably) hill to make this portrait of a pea soup afternoon. (Click to Enlarge)

Blogaddendum res DAILY SYKES #26 Mt. Hood

Published on July 28, 2010 in Our Daily Sykes. 0 Comments

Here’s some help from Robert Cross of Camas, WA.   Robert was alerted to our confusion by a mutual friend, Angela Roark.  Thanks Angela.  Cross has used Google Earth better than we did, perhaps because he was willing to cross the Columbia River with it.  We didn’t.  Here’s his description of what he discovered.

“OK. I checked it out on Google Earth, and pinpointed it exactly, by going down to birdseye level/angle, matching up the view of the mountain, and then flying backwards until the landmarks in the foreground were in view. This photo was def…(tharr be more)initely taken from the hills above Lyle, WA, looking across to Rowena and then down towards the mountain from the NE. I would say that it’s either Alder Springs Rd/Oliver Point Rd or a little further up on the hill at Oda Knight Rd. Looks too far from the river to be Riverview Rd. Is that good enough?”

It surely is good enough Robert, and thanks much.

This appeared first here as "Our Daily Sykes #26" for May 10, 2010.

Our Daily Sykes #94 – Smokey Stover

Published on July 28, 2010 in Our Daily Sykes. 0 Comments

This cartoon sat up among Horace Syke's kodachrome slides. Bill Holman was the complete artist for the Smokey Stover strip that ran from 1935 until his retirement in 1973. He both wrote it and drew it. It was a model for a variety of screwball comics, and Holman's capacity for puns is by now legendary. Here's some of Wikipedia's summary of Holman's accomplishment. "Although most of the stories in the strip (and the occasional comic book) centered around Smokey's escapades with his chief, the plots were mainly a framework to display an endless parade of wild humor, sight gags, puns, mirthful mishaps, nonsensical dialogue and fourth wall references. An 'anything for a laugh' atmosphere pervaded the panels, and Holman's continuing inventiveness managed to keep Smokey Stover going for nearly 40 years. Holman often reached moments of surreality that did for comic strips what Tex Avery's wacky cartoons offered in animation." For myself it is gratifying that the only cartoon to show up among Horace's stuff is an example of Holman's fireman. (Click to Enlarge)

Unintended Effects No. 3 – Rainier, Adjacent, Upon

Published on July 27, 2010 in Unintended Effects. 0 Comments

Another Frank Shaw subject, this one in Myrtle Edwards Park, 1980. Certainly Shaw intended the effect, but not the homeless sleeper. This scene may be also entered as an instance of "Seattle Confidential."

WRECK No.3 “The Horrors of Travel”

Published on July 27, 2010 in WRECK. 0 Comments

(click to enlarge)

THE HORRORS OF TRAVEL

(Harpers Weekly Sept. 23, 1865)

“All aboard” a train

Riding into another train

Or over a cliff because someone

Or something broke a rail!

Whether intentionally or innocently

It is equally horrible for you and the conductor.

That’s it, that’s all, your life!

Play an accordion so blithe

Aboard a side-wheeler – and it’s true

It could still happen – the steamer

Blows up – in two and you

The squeezebox, the purser go three ways.

There is no help – no big sand pail

No caustic for a ship breaking up

Or glue for its passengers and crew.

In spite of all the jolly talk

Or gainful commerce taught

It was once also a horrific thought,

“Where rail meets sail.”

Tourists steaming aboard a Blue Funnel

Travelers riding west on a Mountain Goat

Expected that those machines were well wrought

With handiwork fit tight and crews well taught

But still climbing up the riders’ throats

Were all the old horrors of travel.

Boarding a train or schooner

You don’t have to now.

There are modern ways

To find perdition sooner.

Take your own motorcar

Or ride a motorbike at night.

Dailysykesaddendum Res No. 90 – Stonehenge

Published on July 27, 2010 in Our Daily Sykes. 0 Comments

This arrived recently. Three of Jean's Hillside School (in Bellevue) students packaging Stonehenge on a day's excursion from their class tour to London and Paris.

For comparison: interior of Stonehenge at Maryhill, 2005. (CLICK to ENLARGE)

Our Daily Sykes #93 – A Stock Cactus* (See Correction Below)

Published on July 27, 2010 in Our Daily Sykes. 0 Comments

Unidentified cactus - perhaps Sonoran. / *CORRECTION! My old friend the scientist-musician John Ullman, who knows the southwest better than many, corrects me. John writes, "There is a small cholla cactus in the pic today, but the main image is a yucca, not a cactus Possibly it is the species commonly called a Joshua Tree. I am now at the very edge of my botany chops."

WRECK NO. 2 &/or Unintended Effects No.2 &/or Seattle Confidential #6

Published on July 26, 2010 in Seattle Confidential, Unintended Effects and WRECK. 0 Comments

It is sometimes  difficult for  an associate editor to decide on what page to put a story.  Instead, we give this wrecked Oakland three chances for broader meaning.  It is clearly a WRECK, but it is also an Unintended Effect, and not knowing on whose lawn we have found it, this embarrassment is also somehow confidential, although exposed.   Ron Edge contributed this scene, but Ron, for now, is not able to place it, except to note that it comes from a collection of Seattle-based negatives, which are big glass ones.  Perhaps some reader can figure the location and make it all less confidential.  It seems to me most likely that it is somewhere on the first ridge east of downtown, which is First Hill and Capitol Hill.  It is also Ron who calls this unintended wreck an Oakland.  He explains that because the original is from a large glass negative he could read the name in a detail of the wheel.

There is something strange about this crash scene. The car's frame has been broken near the rear of the engine. Much else is roughed up. And yet the car appears to have skidded to this resting place. Did the car also flip and/or roll before arriving here upright?

Our Daily Sykes #92 – Road Up Steptoe Butte

Published on July 26, 2010 in Our Daily Sykes. 0 Comments

While there are no doubt other well-packed and graded gravel roads up other sloping hills, I'll stick with this being a scene from the post WW2 road that circles Steptoe Butte nearly three times on its ascent to the top. Horace visited Steptoe several times and on at least one occasion the sky was acting Wagnerian like this one.