Now we’ve got the router finally working and I spent a lot of the day catching up on the important but not super urgent emails that were too hard to answer while hunched over in the hard-backed chair. I did great. Cleaned out my inbox, made my to-do list for the upcoming week, got everything under control… And then I checked my feed reader. Gulp. Over four hundred posts!

I’m sorry!

I couldn’t do it. Much as I love all the blogs I subscribe to, l took a deep breath and marked everything “read” in one fell swoop. Huge guilt, but if I didn’t, I’d procrastinate for days and feel like I couldn’t write a blog post until I’d read & commented on everyone else’s first. And I’ve been reading some interesting books lately, plus I have a long overdue post about graphic novels in the works, not to mention the most recent Weekly Geeks assignment (author photos) which looks very fun. So… I’m starting fresh from this point on. Stay tuned for some more bookish posts coming soon.

And just to spice up this boring “housekeeping” post, here’s a vacation photo.

Our cabin was near a little wooded area. This little guy and his sister, and sometimes his mom also, were frequent visitors in our sideyard.

There were some unexpected surprises. It turns out that persuading people to jump is the easy part. In fact, persuasion never entered into the equation. As soon as I suggested it, everyone wanted to do it. The hard part was getting people to wait their turn!

No, actually, the hard part is getting people to jump at the right time. The hard part is snapping the shot while the person is actually off the ground. The hard part is guessing how high the person will jump so you don’t end up cutting off their head or feet in the photo.

No question about it. A great time was had by all, but I am one lousy photographer. My original plan was to convert these to black and white, like the ones in the Jump Book, but the pictures were so bad to begin with that I didn’t even bother.

Here are a few of the least worst:

My sister’s in-laws.

My mom and dad!

My “family of origin.” That’s my little sister in the black shirt.

The cousins. Ok, YOU try getting five kids ranging in age between 5 and 12 to all jump at exactly the same time. But what they lacked in precision, they made up with enthusiasm!

My dear hubby. No, he’s not actually an orchestra conductor.

And here we are, the two of us, on our fifteenth wedding anniversary! :-)

* * *

We have a busy day ahead of us. First, a day of D&D with our dearest pals (masochists that we are, we’re going back into the Tomb of Horrors with brand-new characters that we hope will stay alive at least until lunchtime), and tonight, a big party with extended family & friends on Steve’s side. I expect some great photo ops, bwahahahahaha!

And to reiterate: if you’re reading this, you’re tagged! :-) Please take some jump photos of your own, and leave a comment to let us know.

Philippe Halsman (1906–1979) was a famous portrait photographer. He photographed all kinds of celebrities, and his photos graced the covers of over a hundred different issues of Life magazine. Some of his photos (André Gide, Albert Einstein, Adlai Stevenson, John Steinbeck) even appeared on postage stamps.

Somewhere along the way Halsman had the magnificent inspiration to ask his subjects to jump. Amazingly, almost all of them agreed, and he ended up with hundreds of photos of famous people in midair. The Jump Book is the result: a collection of 191 of these incredible photos. I wish I could scan them all. I suppose if I just showed you a few of my favorites it would count as a fair use, right?

Believe it or not, this is Judge Learned Hand, a VERY BIG NAME in American jurisprudence, at age 80.

The Duke & Duchess of Windsor (he’s the former King of England who abdicated the throne in order to marry the American divorcée; she’s the American divorcée). It took me a moment to figure out why I had such a visceral response to this photo — and then I realized. Is he or is he not the spitting image of my grandfather?

Peter Ustinov, apparently an Xtreme Bookworm, since he couldn’t even put his book down for this!

Halsman with Mary Martin. Halsman was quite athletic, apparently, but you’d never guess it from his expression in this picture. Maybe he’s afraid she’ll fly off to Neverland, and drag him with her?

Jumpology

The photos alone would make this an amazing book, but even better than the actual photos is Halsman’s commentary. Half serious, half tongue-in-cheek, he analyzes the jumps and draws hilariously wise and witty conclusions from them. You see,

when we look at somebody’s face, we don’t know what he thinks or feels. We don’t even know what he is like. Everybody wears an armor. Everybody hides behind a mask…. [But] in a jump the subject, in a sudden burst of energy, overcomes gravity. He cannot simultaneously control his expressions, his facial and his limb muscles. The mask falls. The real self becomes visible. One has only to snap it with the camera.

Halsman goes on to joke about how much quicker and cheaper “jumpology” is than psychoanalysis, but when you look at the pictures you realize he might be on to something. He notices the difference between men’s and women’s jumps; who takes their shoes off first; who bends at the knee; who reaches up with their arms; whether jumping styles run in families. He notices that successful partners such as Simon & Schuster (yep, there was a real Mr. Simon and Mr. Schuster, and they both jumped) have diametrically opposed jumps, whereas the members of partnerships that didn’t last so long (Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis) had almost identical jumps.

What’s next?

I feel a meme coming on! Let’s all photograph ourselves in mid-air! My family will be at a Fourth of July barbecue later this afternoon, and I intend to bring my camera and see who’s willing to jump. I dare you all to do the same. If you’re reading this? You’re tagged! (Fred, this includes you!) When you post your jump pictures on your blog (preferably converted to black & white, emulating Halsman), please leave a comment with a link!

Here they are, six 12yos (the keyboardist didn’t make it into the picture), with their teacher introducing them. They played one song: “You Really Got Me” by The Kinks. And they rocked! Joey broke a drumstick halfway through but managed to keep playing and did an impressive fill (yeah, I know all the drummer jargon now; just ask me what a paradiddle is!) at the very end.

Here’s a close up of our rock star.

A lot of our friends and family showed up, and even those who are not exactly die-hard rock ‘n roll fans (hi, Dad!) seemed to enjoy themselves. It was extremely gratifying!

The younger set had a great time, too. Here are Daniel and Lena with our pals Simon (blue shirt) and Basil (curly hair). Who doesn’t love a fountain? On a warm June evening?

The group lessons were hard for Lena. Her teacher at home does “modified” Suzuki — no group lessons — and Lena really had to struggle to keep up with the kids who review all the songs every week and play them twice as fast. But by the end of the session, if nothing else, she got really good at faking it. And if you’ve never played in an orchestra or band before, trust me: “faking it” is a valuable skill. :-P

I had to put two arrows in this picture because the group teacher, lo and behold, turned out to be good ole Mr. Villasurda, who was my conductor thirty years ago in elementary school and also at Interlochen. He even pretended (?) to remember me. What a trip!

Lena also got to play in her very first orchestra. In fact, this was the very first orchestra experience for about half the kids in it, and considering that they had a grand total of four rehearsals, they did a great job. I admit I felt a wee bit emotional during the performance.

Best of all was getting to spend some time, just the two of us.