cgu-mylesm, Author at Out of the Box

August 23, 2017September 15, 2021 by cgu-mylesm

Chekhov’s Irrigation Report

Hi folks! In my original blog post all the way back in April 2017, I talked about scanning Samuel B. Morris’s “Report submitted by Pasadena Water Department to Federal Investigating Committee at hearing com. 2-24-26 re: San Gabriel Canyon Rs of W.”

That report has finally been digitized and uploaded. You can read it here.

And what of my second post, you probably weren’t asking but I’ll tell you anyway, about Frederick Cecil Finkle’s “Report on Victor Valley Irrigation District, San Bernardino County, California”?

Good news, hypothetical reader who’s really into 1920s Victor Valley irrigation! That’s been uploaded as well.

And whatever became of those Willis S. Jones field notes (last one, I swear)?

Now you too can experience the joy of reading Willis S. Jones’s field notes from the comfort of your home.

And with that, my CCEPS work is finished. But this project isn’t! There will be new fellows continuing this work, so keep an eye out for their posts.

Bye folks!

August 16, 2017September 15, 2021 by cgu-mylesm

Field Trip

Hi folks! I’ve spent most of this week cropping images, so there isn’t much of interest to report. In the meantime, here are some images I took a few weeks back of an exhibit at the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California.

August 9, 2017September 15, 2021 by cgu-mylesm

I Hope Waldo’s Okay

Hi folks! Back with a second volume of newspaper clippings about the 1938 flood, succinctly known as:

“Flood, March 1938 : newspaper clippings from Anaheim, Azusa, Brea, Chino, Claremont, Corona, El Monte, Glendora, Hollywood, North Hollywood, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Monrovia, Ontario, Orange, Pasadena, Pomona, Redlands, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Ana, Santa Monica, Torrance, Tujunga, Upland ; with photos. of San Antonio Creek and the Claremont area”

A recurring element in this batch of clippings is the flood’s impact on the film industry, mostly in the form of delayed productions, marooned cast and crew, and swept away film sets.

A few pieces mention Paramount’s imperiled film vaults, but I’ve yet to come across any reports of permanent losses.

I’m now curious as to whether the flood’s influence is at all discernible in movies produced during this time. Were scenes cut or rewritten in response to damaged sets or stars unable to reach the studios? There’s an account of one production needing to shoot around the absence of a dog (Waldo) scheduled for that day. Did Waldo eventually show up on set? If not, did the filmmakers recast the dog?

These are the things that keep me up at night.

August 2, 2017September 15, 2021 by cgu-mylesm

The Croppening

Over the past several weeks I’ve scanned a bunch of field notes. When I make a scan, it usually looks something like this:

(Apologies for the poor image quality)

Note the negative space around the item.The reason for this is a) the book scanner’s framing tool is somewhat clumsy (you can’t move individual lines of the frame box) and b) jagged white lines sometimes appear along the edges of the frame.

Kinda hard to see, but it’s there.

Anyway, if I box the frame scan too close to the object during the image capture, those white lines are then too close for me to safely crop out later without eating into the item (you want a little negative space in the finished scan, so the reader can see the whole of the item). Hence, lots of negative space.

And so I’ve been in the process of revisiting the field notes, one page at a time, and cropping them to an aesthetically pleasing item-to-negative space ratio. So this…

Now looks like this:

(Again, ugh, that image quality. I promise I’ll learn about screen capturing one of these days)

One down, I’m-afraid-to-even-count more to go!

July 26, 2017September 15, 2021 by cgu-mylesm

There Will Be Map

This week it was back to basics as I digitized a 1923 F. C.
Finkle document, “Report on the hydrology and hydrography of Temecula Creek and
Santa Margarita River, San Diego and Riverside Counties, California.” All the
old favorites are here:

Reference photos!

A big map of the Temecula Creek and Santa Margarita River
drainage basin!

Discharge tables!

And so on. That’s about all the time I have. Next week may involve a field trip… or a post about image cropping? I dunno. Either way, see you then!

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July 19, 2017September 15, 2021 by cgu-mylesm

Camera Room III: World of Camera Room

The scanning of Willis Jones field notes, Box 7, reached its
thrilling conclusion with a return to the camera room. There, I photographed a
graph from 1910 with a label I couldn’t decipher:

And a map of Chino:

The white lots denote property of Chino Land & Water
Co., and the orange
lots are sold.

And that about does it for scanning Box 7. Now to crop the
images, which should be a relatively swift process. At least I hope it’s swift,
otherwise that’s going to be the subject of a terrible blog entry, and I’m
running out of gimmick titles. Like “A Bountiful Crop,” or “Crop Circles.” No, wait! “Crop Rectangles,” because the scans are rectangular, see.
Maybe “Killer Crop,” the dreaded Batman villain who’s really into re-sizing
images?

In the meantime, one more newspaper clip from the 1938 flood, because why not:

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July 12, 2017September 15, 2021 by cgu-mylesm

The Flood of 1938

Hi
folks! This week I took a detour from field note scanning to digitize a bound
collection of 1938 newspaper clippings. Or, as it is concisely titled:

“Flood, March 1938 : newspaper clippings from
Anaheim, Azusa, Brea, Chino, Claremont, Corona, El Monte, Glendora, Hollywood,
North Hollywood, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Monrovia, Ontario, Orange, Pasadena,
Pomona, Redlands, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Ana, Santa Monica, Torrance,
Tujunga, Upland ; with photos. of San Antonio Creek and the Claremont area“

The
volume contains articles detailing a flood that devastated the Inland Empire in
March 1938. For the most part the stories are what you’d expect from newspapers
reporting major natural disasters: government response, relief efforts, property damage, lives
lost, rabbits…

The clippings
touch on a striking variety of ways in which daily life was impacted by the flood.
Pieces abound stressing the importance of boiling water so it’s safe to drink. There’s
a lost and found notice about a heifer. Advice about caring for wet rugs…

…And grand pianos:

A report
about a public library whose children’s department suffered “only” a fifth of
its books being soaked:

The
Denison library of Scripps College was less fortunate:

Scattered
among the bigger stories are vignettes painting a vivid picture of the flood:

I’ll close
by sharing a piece by Dorothy Doyle, because there’s really no other way to
close this. See you next time!

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July 5, 2017September 15, 2021 by cgu-mylesm

Camera Room 2: Camera Room Harder

Hi
folks! This week I made a brief visit to the fabled camera room

to photograph a centerline profile. No tripod
this time, however. The graph paper’s attached to a field notebook and thus too
heavy to prop up on a magnetic whiteboard, so I used an overhead rig.

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June 28, 2017September 15, 2021 by cgu-mylesm

Of Big Mustaches and Small Rocks

Hiya, folks! This week in the exciting world of Willis Jones field notebook scanning: A photograph! Of a person!

This particular human is one John C. Ralphs (1852-1931), who as the card notes ran for San Bernardino County sheriff in 1910. I take it he won, because according to a San Bernardino County Sun article about local civic leaders, Ralphs served as sheriff from 1903 to 1915. The article also describes Ralphs as a “big, powerful man, standing well over six feet tall in his boots, weighing better than 200 pounds and sporting a big handlebar mustache.” It was, as the photograph clearly attests, a mustache worthy of note.

My five minutes of Internet research also found that Ralphs instituted a policy known as the “hobo rock pile.” According to the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, “all misdemeanor prisoners — mostly itinerant visitors to the county — were assigned to work on the county’s rock pile, making little rocks out of big ones.” And make little rocks they did, because eventually the county ran out of rocks for prisoners to smash (what’d the county do with all those rocks?). Chairman J.B. Glover was then authorized by the Board of Supervisors “to purchase 100 tons of rocks to keep the county’s prisoners from being idle.”

So, okay.

I’m not sure what Jones made of any of this, or why Ralphs’s election card was in his notebook. Maybe Jones used the photo as an impromptu bookmark. Maybe he had an interest in tiny rocks. Truth be told, I have a difficult time reading Jones’s handwriting, so for all I know these notebooks could be filled with all sorts of commentary about small rocks and the larger rocks whence they came. I’ll close this meandering post with one more loose end: the backside of the photograph.

Not sure what it says, dunno what it means.

Citations:

Joe Blackstock, “Weird news has been going on for years in Inland Valley,” Inland Valley Daily Bulletin. January 02, 2017. http://www.dailybulletin.com/general-news/20170102/weird-news-has-been-going-on-for-years-in-inland-valley

Nick Cataldo, “A great city like San Bernardino needs great leaders.” San Bernardino County Sun. November 11, 2013. http://www.sbsun.com/20131111/a-great-city-like-san-bernardino-needs-great-leaders

June 21, 2017September 15, 2021 by cgu-mylesm

Scantastic!

Hi folks! This week I’m happy to report that I’ve scanned ten Willis S. Jones field notebooks. Only five more in the box!

And not a moment too soon, because the binding on some of these notebooks is in rough shape. The most fragile so far is from 1914 and looks about ready to fall apart:

Once this box is done, there are additional boxes of field notebooks to scan! I don’t know how many! Aficionados of well water levels during the early 1900s in Chino and Riverside, rejoice!

Update: Turns out this was my tenth blog entry. Coincidence? I think… yeah, probably.