Least Wanted

Yesterday dh Eddie and I visited one of my favorite museums, Intuit. One of the current exhibits (they change what they are showing about 3 times a year) is entitled Least Wanted: A Century of American Mugshots, The Mark Michaelson Collection, and consists of old photographs taken of people "booked" at police stations across the country.



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These are unknown, everyday folks; no big criminals or other celebrities are shown. Some are funny looking, a few are kind of pathetic, and many, many of them are, well, ordinary-looking enough that they could be me ...


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The most recent photos in the exhibit date back to the 1960s, and as I looked I began wondering what had happened to these people after they were booked. Where did they end up? What became of their lives? Are any of them still living? Did they have children? What happened to their children and grandchildren? Alas, we will never know. But each one of those people, just like each and every person we come into contact with in our daily lives, has a story, regardless of whether we ever hear it or not -- which, while an obvious fact, can be quite startling to remember.


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If you have a chance to see the exhibit, do so. I highly recommend this museum in general: it's very small, highly funky, and appealing to both high brows and low. Every time I have visited the place I have come away delighted, enchanted, refreshed. [End of testimonial]

We couldn't use flash on the photos we took there, so the pictures didn't turn out as sharp as we wanted -- but I think that somehow the slight fuzziness adds interest to these photos.

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Reindeer Car

Okay, so one of my plans for 2008 is to update this blog at least twice a week. Here it is January 5th already, and this is just my first post ... buy hey, I'm here! Huffing and puffing and coming in the door at the very last minute, but I am here.

Beginning about a month before Christmas, dh Eddie and I started seeing a car that had little reindeer antlers and a bright red nose affixed to it. We figured its owners must live around here, since we saw it several times. It was the only car like that that we'd ever seen. The originality and whimsy of the thing gave me joy, but I didn't really think too much about the reindeer car until ...

... one day, about a week before Christmas, I was in Walgreen's and found they had some of these "car costumes" (as I later learned they are called) for sale -- and they were 50% off! They must not have been selling like hot cakes if they were on sale, but I snatched one up immediately, literally clasping it to my breast like a treasure while I waited in the check-out line. We put the antlers and red nose on the car a couple of days later and drove around like that until after New Year's. Call me silly, call me goofy, call me tacky, call me over the intercom, but riding in The Reindeer Car was exhiliarating. I feel very lucky to have a husband who not only isn't too embarrassed to have such a thing on the car, but actually enjoys it.

Here's a picture. The antlers would have shown up better against a less-busy background, but hey. (That's Eddie on the right.)