Category Archives: Unintended Effects

BLOG TROUBLES & SHAMELESS COMMERCE

Montesano girls - Count the Stars and Stripes

UNINTENDED EFFECTS

You may have noticed that here – recently and often – you cannot notice.  The blog is up and down regularly as of late.  Now it is up for as long, I hope, as it takes to write that we are looking for alternatives to our present server.   In Paris, Berangere is too far away to fix it.   Wherever – now in Wallingford – I don’t know how.  And so Jean has had to stretch his work bench to handle these – to use now two rarely used categories from our “All Gategories” list for this blog –  “unintended effects” and this “shameless commerce.”   Last Sunday’s now-and-then got no “extras” to the title story about the regrade on Spring Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues because, again, we could not “write to” or add additional contributions to the blog.  This coming Saturday/Sunday we hope to elaborate on the Repertory Theatre feature that will be published in Pacific – we think – and I will then contribute as well a few of the missed “extras” to the Spring Street story.  Meanwhile we await our fates while trying to keep our faiths.  But then what became of these students (below) in the well-ordered typing and shorthand class at the Wilson Business College in Seattle, ca. 1900?

Human Hair - usually yours or a relative's - Art (not for sale - courtesy Granite Falls Historical Museum)
Pedestrians at First and Wall, March 7, 2013

Unintended Effects – LOOK OUT BELOW!

Lifted from The Seattle Times, for June 11, 1941 (Click to Enlarge)

Lookout Below!

She who is dressed in leaves of two pieces –

Her’s is not a war-like race!

In spite of the being abused, we expect,

By invaders and compelled, at least,

To manufacture such “toys” against them.

But what has Buck added to “common”

When he describes as also “ordinary”

The blow-torch-like contraption

That she knows is a weapon but is afraid to use?

 

Buck, of course, is not afraid to test the thing

And stepping forward – but only after

The blond without a name stands back –

He presses the trigger and gets a blast

Of something he knows not what!

Is it a “whoosh” of flame, or smoke?

And what pop it shows at afar!!!

With such, Buck fears

He would not trust an army.

 

It is the sort of “strange toy”

That Scorchy Smith could have used

Five hundred years earlier

To make his escape – with the help

Moments before of Roya’s ruse –

Past the two armed men guarding

The plane – below in the last frame.

He shouts with a whisper “Look!”

To the unnamed blonde behind him.

 

Blog server updates

Our struggles seem to have paid off. For the time being, we’re no longer receiving threatening emails from our provider. Thus, until further notice, the Baist map and our selection of books are back on-line.  Enjoy!

As a little bon-bon, I’m including two images shot on Sunday from the Smith Tower. The downtown pan will be featured in our MOHAI show this April, the other is a unique view into the elevator door gap at the observation deck.

(click, of course, to enlarge photos)

A view of downtown from the Observation Deck (around 500k)
Mind the gap, looking down the shaft from the Observation Deck

DorpatSherrardLomont announcement

Greetings, friends and visitors!

We at DorpatSherrardLomont have  received a number of unhappy messages from our server complaining about this blog’s excessive usage of server resources. We’ve done our best to streamline the blog in a variety of ways, hoping to reduce our usage stats, but evidently not enough.

To that end, over the next couple of days, we’re pulling our largest files available for download – the Dorpat and Berner books & the Baist map – temporarily off line. This is an attempt to avoid having our plug peremptorily pulled.

Please bear with us as we determine new and more efficient methods to continue to provide quality free content.

Best,

The Management (Paul, Jean, BB, and Ron)

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

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?

Unintended Effects No. 1 – Double Exposures

Here begins another category of interest, which we have named “Unintended Effects.”  In this case it is three double-exposures, and all came from Victorian era photo albums assembled in the Northwest.  Two have their own captions.  (Click Twice to Enlarge)

This comes from the James Lowman family album. Henry Yesler's nephew arrived in the late 1870s and thereafter help take charge of Yesler's affair. Interested in theatre, Lowman was one of the owners-investors in The Seattle Theatre. (This one is used compliments of Michael Maslan)
On a Puget Sound Beach, somewhere. A pause from running the dogs, perhaps.