Portland Station.
The Road Home
The train to Oakland leaves at 9:45 so Gail, met over lunch. the Sole Proprietor sits at the station watching all the first class passengers standing in line. The Sole Proprietor does not quite understand this line business, the ticket has the car and compartment number written right on it, yet all these folks are waiting in line for the booth to open and get a boarding pass, luggage in hand. Is it better to be standing? Have they been sitting drinking coffee all morning and now they need to stretch? Could be. The Sole Proprietor thinks they've learned to like this standing in line business, Mike the Magician. that they've been trained by experts to the point when they see someone waiting, they fall right in behind. The Sole Proprietor isn't altogether rational on this subject, so you shouldn't pay too much attention. He sits watching as they pick up their passes, gets up when the line is gone, gets his pass and boards the train.

A good trip. The sun was actually shining this morning Afternoon wine tasting. in Seattle when he woke up. Coffee with his aunt before taking a taxi to the station. Another part of the ritual, coffee with his aunt in the morning before leaving for the train or airport. In the past his uncle Vic and aunt Fran have left early on the Monday morning after the party as well, but much earlier, before the Sole Proprietor has gotten out of bed and so it's just he and aunt Vivienne over coffee, talking about the day and how the weekend has gone. A small thing, but important. The day holds and it gets nicer as they roll south. The night is clear and cold and you can see the snow on the trees flashing in the train lights as you pass.

The trip was fine. There are a couple of pictures of a magic show given The Coast Starlight at the Portland station. by Mike the Magician. Each train has an entertainer on board and although targeted toward the kids, with a few glasses of wine in you it works just fine for the adults as well. It was a good excuse to shoot pictures of the surrounding crowd reacting to the magician. Point at the magician, move the camera just before you shoot to an interesting face and pull the trigger. Another advantage of the digital camera is that people will ask the Sole Proprietor about it, is it a digital camera? His response is to take a picture of the person asking and then to show it to them on the screen. They like that and can't really complain that he's taken their picture without their permission. Anyone who might see their picture on his site, of course, should they feel it inappropriate, can simply request that he take it off, no arguments, no asking for reasons why.

There are issues here he needs to think about. Is it really OK to put someone's picture up without their knowledge? Taken on a train? It wouldn't be OK if he were making money on the picture, of course, selling it for use in an ad, for example. It's OK to shoot pictures of people in public and run them in a newspaper as long as you don't write anything untruthful about them. That's fair use and if it didn't exist there wouldn't be any pictures in the newspapers. But again, in a common area parlor car on the train? How about pictures of his fellow workers at a going away party held in a tavern? Is that OK? He's been thinking about that. One of the reasons for the take them off if there's any question about it policy.

This posting of journal entries on the road is a little Should have made this larger. more complicated than he'd imagined. It would be just fine if he could skip sleeping altogether and spent the hours after midnight transferring pictures from his camera to a laptop, sizing them and fitting them for the page. How do you like the original layout? One on the left, one on the right, one on the left, one on the.... It is possible this needs some rethinking. He'll see how it goes for the rest of this month. With two long weekends coming up and jury duty on the horizon, he might get through. He hadn't thought about this jury duty thing. Do you suppose they let you take pictures from the jury box?


 
The banner photograph was shot with the Coolpix at the Portland train station on the way back to Oakland. Looks OK. The rest were shot on the train as it progressed.

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