i used to live here
July 10, 2011
These photos of every house I’ve lived in have been sitting on my hard drive for a couple of years now, waiting to be made into a page on this site called “every house I’ve lived in”. Which page is clearly never going to get itself made. So, here begins a new level of navel gazing at jodi’s weblog. Enjoy!
166 Columbia Drive, Huron Park, Ontario: December 1971 to spring (or early summer) 1975. I was an only child in this two bedroom 1.5 storey house, from which we moved for more spacious digs when my mom was pregnant with my little brother. Above is how the house looked in 2006 with an ugly new wood porch and beige vinyl siding. When I was a baby the house had light blue slate siding and the wartime housing standard issue concrete block porch with fat iron railings, painted black, as seen in this photo from 1973:
scanned from negatives, Kodak Safety Film
Fun fact about this house: maybe four or five years after we had moved to a larger house up the street, when I was about six or seven, there was a late night fire in the upstairs bedroom where I had slept as a toddler. I’m going to guess it happened around Easter because my memory of the fire is all tangled up with that of some chocolate bunnies that were so tall my parents had to move a shelf up in the fridge just to get them in. Anyway. My mom woke me in the night and said she had something to show me, and she took me down to the back porch and pointed across the back field where we could see the sloped roof of my former bedroom engulfed in flames. Then she told me that the fire might have started because of all the socks I used to shove down the heating registers when I was little, and “so you shouldn’t do that here, because we want to live in this house for a long time”.
I didn’t find out until I was around twelve that the fire was actually started by grow lights in a weed closet.
In my mom’s defense, she was very, very young, probably about 24, and she has no memory of saying anything like that to me, and I have a vivid imagination and also some other memories from around the same time of walking up a tree-lined lane on what looks like an old-timey Southern plantation, hand in hand with two women in long dresses and big floppy hats, sweating through my pyjamas from the heat. And I’m fairly certain that never happened.
Here’s what we drove when we lived at 166 Columbia. This was after the white VW bus had bitten the dust, and before the green Austin Mini. My parents always had the cool tastes in imported motorcars.
scanned from negatives, Kodacolor X
Posted by jodi on July 10, 2011 at 9.22am
it is permitted to clean up after your dog here
July 2, 2011
Also, to throw your garbage into a garbage bin. Whew!
Taken with the Harinezumi digital camera at McNaughton Park, Exeter, Ontario. June 25, 2011.
Posted by jodi on July 2, 2011 at 12.30pm
me at seventeen
June 24, 2011
1. Silver foil abstract paint swoosh wallpaper
2. OZZY
3. Home cut mullet
4. White tank top (4.1 no bra)
5. Peter Frampton drawing, laminated
6. Red eye
There is not one thing not to love about this picture. Me at seventeen = amazing, y’all.
Scanned from old 110 film negatives. Taken with a ten dollar camera of unknown origin, but I remember that it had a quarter, a penny and a four-leaf clover scotch taped to the outside of it, and that I took it everywhere. Hard to believe there was a time when I only had one camera in my purse.
Posted by jodi on June 24, 2011 at 7.28pm
tutu of doom
June 19, 2011
The Brawlers are adorable but also they WILL hit you.
Posted by jodi on June 19, 2011 at 12.15pm
toronto visit, february 2-5
February 7, 2011
Michael Snow’s Flight Stop at the Eaton Centre, a piece I’ve loved since first seeing it on our grade 7 & 8 trip (probably also my first time in Eaton Centre), right after that moment when some boys outside on Yonge Street challenged us to a breakdance-off and one of the grade 7s, Thuy Nguyen, took them up on it and we all thought we were about to get the crap beat out of us West Side Story-style but instead Thuy turned out to be an awesome breakdancer and the boys turned out not to be a breakdancing knife gang and then we went into the mall and there were all of these geese and it was magical. Now every time I’m on Yonge Street I secretly hope to see breakdancers but it never happens.
On Spadina, waiting for the streetcar after a visit to Lettuce Knit (where I got to meet Laura Chau for the first time!). Would you believe this was the first time I’d ever found my own way around in Toronto by myself? It’s true! I walked from the Royal York Hotel to Lettuce Knit, about half an hour in the slow shuffle necessitated by slushy sidewalks, then took the streetcar back. Although we don’t visit Toronto often I’m familiar enough with the neighbourhoods I traveled through, but have always had someone to rely on to guide me in the past. The whole way back on the streetcar I was watching the stops go by and calculating and re-calculating, if the streetcar suddenly turns here I can get off and walk back THERE, okay if it turns up here I can walk back this far and then. . . And when I finally arrived at Union Station and found my way back to the hotel (the scariest part because I have a somewhat irrational fear of train stations and airports and getting lost in them and did I ever tell y’all about the first time I flew out of Atlanta and how I totally gave birth to a cow right there in Sandy’s car when she told me I had to take a train INSIDE THE AIRPORT holy crap!) I felt like a total grownup who can navigate a big city without losing her shit. Which I almost am, finally, at age 39. Whew!
Posted by jodi on February 7, 2011 at 12.18pm
cold
January 16, 2011
Shot with the Maxim MF-1 camera, Lomography Redscale 50-200 film. December 2010, Windsor Ontario.
Posted by jodi on January 16, 2011 at 6.33pm
nerd gets meta
January 11, 2011
Another shot of the Voltron Starshooter at the Milwaukee Art Museum, this one taken with the Maxim MF-1 camera, Lomography Redscale 50-200 film. If only I’d thought to have Peter take a picture with the Holga of me taking a picture of the Starshooter with the Maxim MF-1; that would have set my nerdy little heart aflame. Oh, wait: I could have had Michael get a shot with the Polaroid of Peter taking a picture with the Holga of me taking a picture of the Starshooter with the Maxim MF-1! FYI, since this trip I have placed stricter rules on myself regarding how many cameras I’m allowed to carry at one time. The weight of my bag put a crick in my shoulder, y’all.
The Redscale film is spooled backwards so that when the shutter opens up the light passes through the emulsion, creating an effect similar to shooting with a red filter. On a camera that’s less basic you can push your film speed settings to bring non-red tones back into the photos, but with the Maxim it’s a total crapshoot. Here’s another one from that day.
Peter and Michael in a strange double exposure, which I didn’t even know could be done with that camera. Perhaps I wound the film back a bit? Maybe I even did it on purpose, who knows (this is where note-taking would be handy, if I weren’t such a hack).
Shooting straight into the sun at the Mars Cheese Castle, where we stopped to buy Dylan a giant piece of cheese shaped like the state of Wisconsin. Hell yeah.
Posted by jodi on January 11, 2011 at 8.41am
voltron starshooter at milwaukee art museum
January 7, 2011
October 12, 2010.
We took this vintage robot camera on our Wisconsin trip with us last fall but didn’t really use it much; I’ve been slow to shoot up its first roll of film, trying to use it sparingly because the 110 film isn’t manufactured anymore and is becoming hard to get. But letting old expired hard-to-get film sit in the camera for months isn’t all that smart, and I have two more rolls waiting in the freezer, so I’m taking this bad boy downtown tonight to finish up the second half of the roll. Soon we can see how this camera performs! I’m even going to sacrifice one of the two old “Magicube” flash cubes I’ve been saving. Because there’s no sense hoarding stuff, especially stuff you inherited from another hoarder.
So if you’re out at Phog or Artcite this evening try to look really photogenic because I only have 3 good flashes left on this cube, y’all.
Posted by jodi on January 7, 2011 at 1.45pm
grammar fail
January 2, 2011
Ah, Windsor. I love you even though you’re kind of dumb.
(Harinezumi digital, December 2010)
Posted by jodi on January 2, 2011 at 4.23pm
party party
December 31, 2010
Barbie cake, November 1971. It was for my youngest aunt’s 8th birthday, 3 weeks before I was born. I wish I had this beautiful formica table from my grandparents’ kitchen; the chair vinyl is printed with the same pattern as the table top. LOVE.
Scanned from old negatives (Kodak Safety Film).
Posted by jodi on December 31, 2010 at 6.55pm
