History - SB Hopper

Just for the halibut (trust me, there will be a rolling of the eyes)

I'm eating too much and exercising...let's call it infrequently. I know it's winter, and PNW winters encourage big bowls of soup and stew mopped up with bread. Mmmm, bread and soup. But this is getting out of hand. The belt buckle never lies. So it was probably a really

Blog

Never give your parents grief

It's a pretty solid rain right now in Seattle. We're very close to the I'm always cold season. It doesn't matter how many layers one wears...always a little cold. I'm not complaing, at least not entirely. I can't abide excessive heat, and I believe all of us will be

Blog

Norwich on Caesar

John Julius Norwich never disappoints. Wikipedia describes his as a popular historian, which probably means academics wouldn't regard him highly. Who cares. I read his fantastic history of Byzantium, and I was hooked. Flipping through The Middle Sea, a History of the Mediterranean, and I read this description of Caesar.

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Carthage Must Be Destroyed

Carthāgō dēlenda est. ~ Cato (via Wikipedia) The sirens beckon. I am lost in the ancient world. A re-discovery of sorts. I spent the last 6 years or so not wanting to think too much about the Middle East. I'd had enough, for a lot of reasons. Looking back I think

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Objects in mirror are closer than they appear

I'm not ready for the summer heat; Seattle threw me a bone today. A chilly spring day with the best kind of rain. You could see it approaching, you could smell it in the air. I was walking south, and I knew things were changing quickly. There was a good

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When laws don't work

shoulda been a tweet

Shoulda been a Tweet: History and American exceptionalism

I wanted to share an excellent opinion piece in the Washington Post - "History isn't just for patriots", by Daniel Immerwahr. I thought it concisely and eloquently explained how the point of teaching history is not to show how great or bad America is, but to explain how we got

On the Streets

The Guild

I have a lot of Seattle I should have regrets. It's a flaw, I admit. I too often fall on the thinking about doing something vs. the actually doing it side of things. One of those regrets is not having seen a movie at The Guild theater when I had

Blog

Shoulda been a tweet: Beirut

I'm critical of CNN. If you watch them on cable, you're just becoming less-informed. It's visual twitter. A stupid game. I'm not faulting the on-air personalities. They're hard-working, and I think they want CNN to be informative. But there's too much working against them. It's the same for most of

Architecture

Another Anhalt

A few posts back I discussed Capitol Hill’s Loveless Building. In reading about the architect’s history and the building’s story, I hatched a vague plan to photograph some of the incredible Tudor Revival homes on Capitol Hill. That led me straight to Fred Anhalt&

35mm

Palmyra, Syria 2001

Palmyra, Syria*, summer 2001. The photo is not very good. I’m posting it for two reasons. It’s from my first attempt at scanning 35mm film negatives on the Epson V800 flatbed photo scanner. I used the basic scanning software. I’m not sure if the

Fujifilm

Ilan Pappé at Town Hall Seattle: Prospects for Peace in Israel-Palestine

On Monday 22 May 2017, historian Ilan Pappé spoke at Town Hall Seattle in a forum titled “Prospects for Peace in Israel-Palestine.” Mr. Pappé, an outspoken critic of Israeli policies towards Palestine and the Palestinians, spoke about the origins of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, returning frequently

Film

Syria, before the storm

I’ve started on a second archival project. Scanning and preserving photos I took in the Middle East in the early 2000s. The photos are flawed. I was using a Nikon 8008. Great camera, but even though I knew the basics, I got the settings wrong more often than

Chinatown-International District

On the Streets: Chinatown-International District and Pioneer Square

Social media platforms don’t have to be a chase for follows and likes. I caught up with Seattle artist and photographer Brett Nelson for a photo walk through Seattle’s Chinatown-International District and Pioneer Square. I met Brett through Instagram (@bretthnelson). He shoots fantastic photos, primarily with

History

Preserving and archiving old photos, movies, and letters.

If you like photography and photojournalism, you should consider following Lens, a New York Times section devoted to “Photography, Video and Visual Journalism”. It has become my favorite section of the paper. It has also led to a family project. On 29 November 2016, James Estrin wrote a

Fujifilm

On the Streets: Georgetown, Seattle

Photography can be a solitary pursuit. It’s nice to be able to mix it up occasionally and chase shots with a friend. Did that Wednesday night, and it was a lot of fun. My friend suggested we head to Georgetown. That worked for me. I’ve heard

Authors

Short Takes: Countdown to Pearl Harbor

December 7th gets me everytime, much like the anniversaries of the JFK assassination, the lunar landing, and 9/11. It seems impossible to not reflect on how Pearl Harbor happened and what the country was experiencing. On the most recent anniversary of Pearl Harbor, I found myself thinking about how