Passport Renewal

Not that we are going anywhere, but our passports needed renewal because we had run out of blank pages. How do you like that? We had been to so many places that required a stamp, that we didn’t have enough pages if we travelled again.

Sadly, I had to send in the passport to get a new one. I didn’t make a copy of the pages to remind me where I have been. I can remember, but who knows for how long. And, at 76, this is probably my last passport. Perhaps they will return it and I will have to rely on my fading memory.

But the best thing was making the photos, pictured above to use. They provide a list of requirements: size, color, pose, lighting, background, expression, attire. They also provide a crop tool.

To fill out the application on your computer, you need Adobe Acrobat. I downloaded it, gave them a credit card, and got a clean copy so no-one could complain about my handwriting. Today, I will have to cancel my 7 day trial (why doesn’t AARP have a discount for this?).

I used my studio lights and a white backdrop. Printed on my semi-professional printer. Cut on a paper cutter and used an exacto blade on the edges. The final results will be mailed to the Government and copies stored in my portfolio.

This saved me no money, because …. But it did save me a trip to UPS or Staples or a photog. Now, I just have to deal with the anxiety of having my pictures rejected for some technical reason like the wrong size, expression, lighting or clothing.

Duckmans Return To Machu Picchu

We don’t usually buy these images, you know the ones they take as you get as you board a cruise ship, stay at a hotel or go to a historic site, but we did at the Norton in Palm Beach when we visited the Machu Picchu show.

Why? We walked the ruins at Machu Picchu in 2018. Life changing and transformational. The views, the physical challenges, the crowds. Cannot go back. Too old and too infirm. The air is thin and the mountain is steep. Difficult to get to. Slippery. Settled for the show and the VR at the museum.

Breathtakingly beautiful.

 

Auschwitz Bedroom

Typhoid and dysentry and who knows what else. No sheets. No blankets. Shit through the slats. Next day, move the bodies from the gas chamber to the crematorium. Take a wiff. Listen in. Workers died from disease, exhaustion and malnutrition. Many killed. Replaced. How did the Nazis do this? Few stood up for fear of death, never thinking about others. The autocrats took over, spreading their lies about the Jews. Only Aryan children were allowed to survive. Horrific understates the evilness.