Silk Scenes

While I like seeing some friend's 2-second-old Facebook upload taken by iPhone midway through a bungee jump down some New Zealand gorge, I'm old enough to remember slide shows, and these were pretty awesome also.

This time of year, in the backstretch of August, friends and neighbors would disperse to various ports-of-call near and far. Once everybody was back home and the transparencies returned from the developer, we'd have a round of get-togethers down in the rec rooms, reliving the adventures along with them.

I loved these parties, and not just because we got to stay up well past dinner and watch the grownups get snockered.

Here's how it would go. After the inevitable ten minutes of futzing with the projector and the slide trays and screen (the latter always snapping back up its roller after the first few attempts to stretch it), the French onion dip would land on the table, the lights would dim, and the projector's lamp would go on, throwing a hard, bright beam through the darkened room, which, just as in Mad Men, soon filled with swirls of cigarette smoke.

And then the pictures would click on. If my family was hosting, they were in no particular order, surprising even Dad, who'd be doing the man's work of supervising A-V. We'd go through several trayfuls. If the slides were blurry, thumb-filled, unflattering, or overexposed nobody cared--imperfection was part of it, and the ribbing was a good leveler among those who weren't lucky enough to get a holiday that year.

For a kid, it was magical--the dark room, the off-the-cuff narration, eating onion dip, hearing your mom squeal at a particularly gruesome candid, and best of all, that wonderful few seconds of anticipation as the tray ratcheted forward and the next slide dropped into place.

So, a bit of a long introduction to today's entry, Around the World in 80 Scarves (Actually More Like 5).

In no particular order,

the backstreets of Paris, in a lovely shade of bordeaux



The Canadian side of Niagara Falls--the boat (not painted to scale) is called "The Maid of the Mist":



The Trevi Fountain (with lots of coins for wishes!)



The Via Condotti, also in Rome (cue envious ooooohs from the ladies, yawns from the kids)



And last but not least, good old London, now my home town . . . in glorious (and true to form) monochrome:



Have a great Wednesday, and don't hog the onion dip.