Your Today in Pictures...

[Lee Mannering]

Something I started doing during covid lock down when I heard children saying Santa would not be coming. Oh yes he will!

I've also found another use for a TV






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[Ken Finch]

Hi Graham. Here in Kent, we have had similar problems with burst water supply pipes due to expansion and contraction of the clay in the soil. Contraction because of the drought in the summer and expansion due to the rainfall and now the sudden drop in temperatures. Ken Finch.

[Graham Ritchie]

Brian

Your photo is what Christmas should look like

For us it was me out with the poor old lawn mower yesterday, also its busy on our street with the good folk fixing the street piping "new" on a more permanent basis from the repairs from the earthquakes back in 2011. These new pipes are much stronger and can take it, hopefully it wont be put to the test.

[Brian Fretwell]

Winter (if not Christmas) came to London last night. View from my front door.

[Douglas Meltzer]

It's always nice when trees hang on to their color this late in the season. I wish my films would do the same!

[Steve Klare]

Last weekend was the annual Advent Vespers Service at our son's college in indiana. This is kind of a big deal in our house since not only is is a beautiful concert, our son is up in the booth running the live stream. This elevates it up to a level worthy of being projected through my VP with audio through my Home Cinema Sound System (pat. pending!). The only other streamed video we reserve for this rare honor is the Winter Olympics.

So, after dinner I reconnected some cabling: out went the video player, in went the laptop. I brought everything up and went to the YouTube page where the stream was scheduled to start in a few minutes.

Now, we want Steven to know we are with him and care about what he's doing even 800 miles away, so I sent him this text:
.

Sure enough, about a minute later I got this back:
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He did a really good job of it: there was little to no time when the cameras weren't looking at something interesting and relevant to the music.
.

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At one point my wife said "That soloist sounds really great!" I said "Yes: they ARE really good speakers!".

-I mean, of COURSE the young man has been in voice classes since he was three years old and rehearses 8 hours per day, but I gotta get credit for something here!😉 (I re-foamed those speakers MYSELF!)

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Merry Christmas!

[Lee Mannering]

A few days ago but leaves falling on the Leeds Liverpool Canal Uk

[Douglas Meltzer]

Graham,

Well done. My back hurts just at the thought of moving those around!

[Graham Ritchie]

After putting things of for almost a year the last few weeks I have started moving the "motion picture" stuff up stairs at Ferrymead Heritage Park. The good folk in the photographic society that roped me into joining years back, have little if any interest "if any" in the motion picture stuff, they are "totally" into still photography, so anytime I talk projectors, they kind of look at me with a blank look as there there minds are really elsewhere

So apart from me, and fellow forum member Pat we are the only ones really interested I must admit, moving the Westar up stairs was not easy, anyone who thinks a GS1200 is heavy, should try moving 35mm around, its not fun. Anyway I have made the start, plus moving what's left of a pair of Power projectors as well, that was donated in bits a while back, although the lamp house is Zeis Icon and not original, its the best I can do for the present. Also got my hands on a display cabinet as well, anyway they are happy that the movie stuff has moved away from downstairs to give them more room for there still stuff

I donated my old cinema "Happy Feet" poster

Anyway its a start, still a lot to do over the coming months

[Steve Klare]

A Double-Dog Dare!

Last week we went out to Indiana to visit our son at college during their family week. We got rained on at a football game, saw an improv comedy show, went to a concert, met other students and their families and saw parts of the campus we've never toured before.

Best of all: we got to spend some time with our kid! We miss him during the semesters!

While we were there, we did kind of a pilgrimage to Hammond, Indiana: an old steel mill town maybe an hour's drive away from Chicago.

At their Visitor Center, we met this fellow!
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In the world of movies, Hammond Indiana is called Hohman, Indiana, and it's the site of the alleged events in the movie "A Christmas Story", which one of the cable networks loops for 24 hours, every December 24th through 25th. In that story (-among many other things, of course), a hapless grade school boy is goaded into testing out the old wives' tale that a tongue will stick to a metal pole below freezing. He finds out it's not an old wives' tale at all, but the hard, uncomfortable, embarrassing truth of proven scientific fact! The Police and the Fire Department are BOTH there before he can walk away from that flagpole! (Hence the statue!)

It means even more to us, because the author of these stories, Jean Shepherd, was a fixture on New York AM Radio all the years I was growing up. Hammond is his home town, and the house he grew up in is still there, as are his elementary and high schools, all of which figure prominently in these stories. When Mom and Dad were a lot younger than I am today we often turned off the TV and listened to Jean Shepherd. He told stories with the same characters as this one, he told tales of the foibles of modern (pre 1980) life and improvised some really bad music. You never knew what he was going to do, and sometimes I don't think he did either!

I remember once we went on vacation many hours away Upstate. This radio-madness meant enough to Dad that he went out and bought himself a serous portable radio: one of those with all the different bands on the tuner and about 6 D Cells installed!

We got our Jean Shepherd that week!

(-besides, Dad was always a customer for a good electronic gadget! I still use his best set of speakers.)

[Graham Ritchie]

Brilliant pictures Dominique somehow those statues remind me of street mimes

Lee I hope you told those kids that "Santa" is not real, just some guy dressed up to look like him just kidding

[Lee Mannering]

Santa Clause popped up for a photo shoot here today. I've heard he will be appearing at Blackpool Sunday.
You should have heard the children screaming
It's Santa God bless them.

[Brian Fretwell]

I was there the day they unveiled that Chaplin statue in British Film Year. I think that is Tom Conte being interviewed next to it.

[Dominique De Bast]

Visiting the Christmas Market at Leicester Square in London, I saw statues I never noticed before since they are not located where most people walk.

.This one, however is well visible.

[Graham Ritchie]

Today it was time to give the screen a spruce up with water based semi-gloss vivid white Its been years since the last one same type paint, just a clean and a couple of coats of this stuff with a good quality roller,