Doug Fine: Author, Journalist, Adventurer, Goat-Herder

I was as surprised as anyone that I had a discussion with my Sweetheart the other day that surrounded fashion. The word itself never came up. On the surface, I was recording what used to be called a Kodak Moment in our family’s main room. The term referred to a once-prominent company that helped people use chemicals to render physical photographs.

I had stumbled out of a writing session, bashing the usual toe on the usual toy train, to see that the denim and bamboo teepee that my Sweetheart had made (from local bamboo) was being sheepskin-carpeted by my 3-and-a-half-year-old, while his younger brother, my one-and-a-halfer, waited I thought fairly patiently to go inside and make himself comfortable as their game of “Chillin’ Hunter/Gatherer” got underway.

My Sweetheart tried at first to back out of the photo frame, protesting that she looked frumpy. As if she ever could. In her mind’s mirror, though, she saw: ripped Ragg wool sweater, tights, and hair knotted above head. I, of course, thought she looked beautiful. Telling her so made her reluctantly reconsider. Everyone’s now glad she did.

In addition to how she looked, I considered a key component of the Kodak Moment to be what she was doing: she was knitting me a hat on a Monday morning at 10:23 a.m. The “Surburbs of Goa” station from soma.fm was the soundtrack. The two psyched, giggling kids were of course contributing to the vibe.

Looked at from a higher altitude, even at the time, I saw where she was coming from: a photo, if saved and forwarded to the digital projector, is forever(-ish). It’s with us, at least, until today’s technology becomes unusable in a decade. I didn’t want her praying for our camera to go the way of the floppy disk, simply because of a fairly aged sweater.

But today, I was really arguing in insisting that she let me snap a couple of shots, we are the camera shop. We not just process but have final cut. For the first time in a long time, I remembered when I used to be bound by those 24 photos per roll. When I returned from the Burmas and the Alaskas of the world, I saved every glossy print, even the blurry or thumb-invading ones, because who knows? Maybe I’d see something in them later. An image was a document too precious to discard. Today I’m sometimes uploading upwards of five hundred per month.

I realize now, a week after the teepee photo shoot, that the essence of the discussion wasn’t only the democratization of image processing, but acceptance of the Normal Life Photo Era. No longer does the family dress up to go to Sears for the annual portrait. Instead we’ve got a documentarian (usually me) recording the situation.

Furthermore, journalistically speaking, the trend I see — and I think it’s a positive trend — is our family wardrobe moving toward a sort of Digital Age silk and bear skin situation. Maybe “progressing” is an even more apt verb. The more Neolithic the better. Functional and attractive from whatever’s out there in our ecosystem, like the Flintstones. Only with Internet zipper and buckle delivery. What my Sweetheart was today considering frumpy, in the locavore future, will be thought of as well-maintained and super stylin’.

When I uploaded the month’s photos a few days later, I gently informed the lady of the house that she had something new to learn if she wanted to. I had proof. Not that I needed it, of course. To me, she is most stunning with the expression she’s wearing. The clothes I don’t even notice. I have hardly any use for the clothes.

Not that I blame my Sweetheart for working valiantly to keep her family presentable in the wider world. Or for wanting all of us –- this wasn’t just about her — to just look terrific. Not just presentable: to the extent that I pass fashion muster at, say, live events, it is pretty much the result of something she’s bought, knit or sewn for me. Increasingly the last two. She’s blueprinting a new pair of travel day pants for me now, for example: it’ll have enough pockets for TSA-needed documents and credit card, but will be made of comfy and almost embracing hemp-and-linen to make the window seat itself endurable if not relaxing.

Before I called my work break over following the teepee photo session, we as a family discussed how to transport a temporary home in the event of emergency travel. This is how I read the History of the Indian Wars now. In the context of, “How the heck did the Nez Perce hold out for 30 winters in the middle of what’s today Idaho wilderness? With no Netflix, even. Those were tough cookies and I’d like to know what it takes to manage it.

Because we’d just need to make it happen for two or three years at most, and hopefully much less. I mean, hopefully not at all. I like Netflix and democracy. But the point is my kids’ functional teepee has become a transit-through-the-wild-with-family conversation piece. Little did my Sweetheart know when she found the blueprint on that crafts blog.

Many ancient cultures survive humanity’s periodic post-turmoil adjustments. A relatively recent example is the Raramuri of Mexico, who have been found via DNA testing to be the descendants of the Mimbreno folks who once lived on the Funky Butte Ranch. In fact our high ground was a lookout station: lotta obsidian flakes around the place.

For my Sweetheart, the result of the photo shoot is the dawning awareness that she, like any parent of young children, is fighting a losing battle if she thinks there’s ever going to be time for sprucing up before photos, which would require one of those scripts where the hero freezes time: parental physics doesn’t allow it.

An associated realization that came with the one about living in the “shoot it now, edit it later” era: our home is not a good one for finding the same thing in the same place a second time. Not even my laptop. Forget about my camera during a Kodak Moment. Concepts seem to rank higher in my household’s memory triage system than things. Love awareness more than pen or avocado location.

So, what’s the best way to handle the “always one the set” mentality? Simple. We must perpetually all try to look righteous. Luckily, to my taste, that’s much more a factor of “fire in the eye” or “quite confident smile” than “wearing something more upscale than a Ragg wool sweater on a Monday morning.”

More happy results of the teepee photo shoot: after my “you can’t ever look frumpy” demonstration warmed her up, we rallied the little ones and spent some fine family moments in a favorite creekside spot, now well past its lilies and into crunchy autumnscape. There I wrote these words:

OK, random song rotation in the park
,
I hear you again,

And you’ve been a
Top notch adviser in the past,
Between these fir,
Above this creek
,
Atop this very knot dotted Pooh bridge,

On which my family and have

Enjoyed many a game of Poohsticks
,
And associated hydraulic lessons
.

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