Spies; More Baseball

Went on the Spy Tour of Santa Fe, part of the Los Alamos ScienceFest (warning: autoplaying video).

It was just a short stroll — and that was kind of one of the points that the tour leader, Ellen Bradbury Reid, wanted to make — all the intrigue happened in the space of just a few blocks. All walking distance, because nobody involved really had access to a car, and they were all from out of town so had to meet at obvious landmarks.

Stopped a few of the key locations, heard some stories about how the spies — there were only three of them at the Manhattan Project, all spying for the Russians — worked their way into espionage, met with handlers, and were caught. KGB, FBI, military intelligence, spies and their handlers were all in Santa Fe and La Fonda was at the center of it all — and pretty much all of them wanted their pictures taken with the statue of Archbishop Lamy



There's some historical photos at the New Mexican article about the tour.

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Back to Fort Marcy Ballpark in the evening for another Fuego game with some friends. There were a few tense moments, where it seemed the Fuego were coming back to close the lead in the final innings, but it wasn't nearly the excitement – or the happy ending — of our previous outing. A lovely evening outside, though, a good time.

Oh, and hung out with the designer of the NASA "worm" logo, NBD

Design Corps, the local organization of professional creatives, hosted Bruce Blackburn for one of its Coffee Talks. I know Bruce as the owner of Cheyenne's brother, but he recently got some publicity when a reprint of the classic NASA Standards Manual he worked on was a Kickstarter. Oh, yeah, I backed it.

The Corps' founders are neighbors of his, I'd brought up the idea of him talking, but it was really just a matter of time. So last Wednesday, about a dozen of us sat around with coffee and pastries to hear stories about how this landmark piece of visual communications came about. It was awesome.



So much of it was a product of its time, from the visual aesthetic to the new thinking about government communications. But at the same time, it's clear that a lot about the design business never changes. He was an entertaining speaker, full of sharp observations and commentary.

Yes, it's entirely possible that afterwards I went up to him like a fanboy to get my book signed.

Bram's On About Comics Again

I got to offer some thoughts on comics as a prelude to this Santa Fe Reporter article on local (and formerly local) creators.

Great to be drawn by the enormously talented Turner; I'd just received the images of that tintype photo shoot when Alex requested a reference photo. Next thing I know, there I am in fencing gear on the cover.

Tintypes

Pat's been doing some intensive experiments with tintype and was looking for more subjects to build his portfolio. He had some time open this morning before I went to fencing.





Pat was using strobes, so I had a comparatively short exposure. A few years back, Monica had the opportunity to have a tintype done by Will Wilson, it was the more traditional long exposure, probably around 30 seconds.



(Right is left, left is right; could've flipped these scans, but seemed most appropriate to leave them.)