randy_byers | Weekend preview

I've got the house to myself this weekend, since Denys is in DC for the National Equality March. I've got a big writing project I'm still working on (a Worldcon report), but have various social plans as well. carl and Scott are coming over to hang out this evening, and tomorrow is the fannish pubmeet. I'm sure there will be football and baseball viewing fit into the schedule too. Need to order some birthday prezzies for distant friends.

Maybe it's because I'm alone in the house, but I felt pretty distant last night. I mostly like the solitary life I lead, but sometimes it gets to me. Sometimes I feel like a freak, unable to make connections like normal people. Well, what can you do? All I can do is walk this path that is my life. In the end it's a good life, even if it isn't like yours. The grass is always greener on the other side, and everybody gets the blues.

There was a great story about Jini Dellacio in today's Seattle Times. She, by happenstance, became a rock'n'roll photographer in her late 40s in the mid-'60s. Photographed local bands like the Sonics and Wailers, as well as touring rock acts that came through town. She moved on to architectural photography in the '70s, but her rock photography remained famous in the music scene here. They had a retrospective of her work in 1987, and the Crocodile is hosting another one now. They just celebrated her 92nd birthday at the Crocodile, and she said it was one of the high points of her life. "I feel pretty happy about myself," she confesses. "If you don't know already, your happiness comes in being busy. It doesn't come in sitting, taking a nap and putting your feet up. I feel so lucky."

So back to work!

Above is her 1967 shot of Neil Young. Dellaccio asked Young to get up on his roof in his fringed leather jacket and "fly like a bird." She didn't print the shot at the time because she thought it made his face look old, "and he was so beautiful."
(Caption in the Seattle Times.)