Down the Road

Photographs and stories by Jim Grey

Recommended reading

Jim Grey
3 comments on Recommended reading
1 minute

💻 I like to say I’m a realist, but I’m actually a pessimist. I’ve made it work for me, though. Armin Romacher wrote a good article this week on how you can do that if you, too, are a pessimist. Read Lessons from a Pessimist: Make Your Pessimism Productive

Candy
Nikon F3, 35mm f/2.8 AI Nikkor, Kodak Max 400 (x-2007), 2019

💻 M. B. Henry tells the history of M&Ms, and how the British actually had the idea first with a candy called Smarties. Read M&Ms: A Crunchy, Colorful History

💻 I grew up working class. I don’t think we were poor, but we certainly didn’t have money for extras. But I never felt deprived. Lawrence Yeo reflects on how the world around you shapes whether you feel poor or not as a kid. Read Being Poor vs. Feeling Poor

📷 Mike Eckman reviews an early Minolta SLR. Clearly, Minolta had not yet gotten the memo on what an SLR should look like. Read Minolta-ER (1962)

Sign up for my monthly email to get an insider view of what I’m working on! Sign up here.

Comments

3 responses to “Recommended reading”

  1. DougD Avatar
    DougD

    Good article on feeling poor, I also grew up in modest circumstances, I remember asking my mother if we were rich when I was 5 or so. Mom (who actually had experienced hardship during WW2) said “We are rich, we have a roof over our heads and enough food to eat “ I be always remembered that and it’s helped me be grateful.

    Reply
  2. Andy Umbo Avatar
    Andy Umbo

    Interesting article on feeling poor. Certainly in my era, the blue collar working class were NOT poor at all! I remember when my parents, both white collar professionals, and my dad with a college degree, moved us to another city for work, that was primarily blue collar. Our neighbors had union working dads, and stay at home moms, decent cars that they bought new, and cabins in the “up north”, they went to often for hunting and fishing trips. They also went on family vacations, which we never did since my parents couldn’t sync their vacations. I remember, my dad saying that his and my moms combined incomes were probably just about meeting the union wage for our neighbors, and I also felt the need to work for myself, and did so In high school, full time summers and 25 hours a week during the school year. I don’t remember, even as a kid, feeling I had a lot of time to mess around. Eventually, when I was in my 20’s a lot of those union were broken by moving those jobs out of state, to the south (and btw, states like Indiana as well).

    The Minolta article is interesting as well. The camera body design reminds me of the Miranda Sensorex, that also had a huge plate on the front with a star on it, that was the result of the previous model, the Automex, having that area. being covered by a large sensor for the selenium meter. Form follows function…

    Reply
  3. fishyfisharcade Avatar
    fishyfisharcade

    Smarties are still around. While I rarely eat M&Ms I’ll happily scoff smarties. These days you can get them in packets, like M&Ms, but when I was a child they always came in cylindrical cardboard tubes (the tubes are now hexagonal) and the plastic cap had a random lower case letter embossed in it, maybe as some sort of attempt at adding education to your sugar-coated chocolate treats. I used to pop the cap and then mainline mouthfuls of crunchy goodness straight into my mouth. 😀

    Reply

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

%d bloggers like this: