Scowlery

A small scowlery, but a good one.

Some friends came by last night and, after supper, we got down to a scowlery. The cat turned tail.

I visited my old place of work yesterday and had a laugh with three friends there. And I encouraged them to scowl for me.

Time passes and months go by and you realise there hasn't been a family scowlery. So one has to be organised. This, last night, was an FFS -- "Flat Face Scowlery," one of several varieties we've developed.

My bernlaw was kind enough to take this and another snap of my five sisters and me. Missing are my two brothers, my oldest and youngest siblings; one is 2000 km to the west; the other 4000 km to the east. I tried to get a scowlery on the go but my sisters, being more kindly than I, found that difficult. In the other picture, we all tried to smile; that was a little more successful.

Not all of us got the memo on going bananas. But we tried our hardest when scowlery time came. it was little Em's first scowlery and, although the picture was taken at that exact moment when her scowl was morphing into a smile, she was actually very good at it. Much better than her great-uncle. I think i have a lot to learn about scowls from my relatives.

Here, after a glass or two, J and C tested their scowlery. Not bad, I think. Under indoor light, this tungsten-tuned film works much better than it does under daylight. Eastman CineStill 800 film, in Olympus Pen D3.

"What have we done? Another year over. A new one just begun." A year's-end scowlery for you.

We were *not* making a point about Thanksgiving, a celebration that did not exist in my own life until I was an adult. That's because it was a Canadian holiday. I and most of my friends were born into a distinctly non-Canadian-but-Newfoundland culture. Thanksgiving was one of the areas of non-overlap. Today, though, it is, nearly universally, celebrated in Newfoundland, and we took advantage of the holiday to spend part of the weekend with friends. No, we were not making a point. We were just doing a scowlery. A pleasant scowlery among friends.

Two of these girls are daughters of one of my nieces; the other is their cousin. I told them I wanted them to smile nicely at me and then to scowl, and then to scowl some more. They were good at it.

The dog, a brown Labrador Retriever, was too sensible to take part and stayed just outside the camera's view; you can imagine her if you wish. A couple of adults, too, were unable to summon the All-Foolery required. Only one of the lot still had his dinner hat on. The camera sat on the cushioned back of a chair and was nowhere near level. Nonetheless, a good Scowlery was achieved.

I wanted to see A's Welsh carved olivewood spoon, so she brought it for me to see. While in my office, she made a nice scowl for my collection.

I'm always scanning old negatives, trying to catch up. I'm at the summer of 1987, and this was taken somewhere in London in late July of that year on Kodak 200 Gold film. I hated Margaret Thatcher (then as now) so I was amused by this homemade, artful, saucy doorbell. I didn't dare ring the bell for fear of disturbing the livyers there.

The people here, all from among my beloved family members, were expressing their disdain for the new guy shuffling into the USA White House later this month. Sadly, the guy on the right, who may be the leftmost of them all, lost his fishface-pucker-n-cheek-suck just before the camera fired. This was a few nights ago, on the night after Old Christmas Day.

As I was returning from lunch, N, on the right, introduced me to K, her new summer co-worker, and I asked for a picture. I got three good ones.

Last night a bunch of us got together to eat, drink, tell stories and peruse a collection of 45-year-old school yearbooks. Lots of fun. Before some of us left, the hostess (at the right edge) asked for a scowlery. All were glad to comply. I took three pictures and none of them was perfect, so I took the liberty of using bits from all three. This is the result.

These are relatives of mine, or mostly: a niece, her husband, two grand-nephews, two grand-nieces and the girlfriend of one of the grand-nephews. We were eating out at a local Chinese restaurant with another table of rather older relatives last night. The food was good but I asked them to glare at me. My niece said, "We're rotted." I dolled the picture up with heavy contrast and vignetting this morning and posted it to my grandniece's Fbk page; she liked it.

By strict tradition, Christmas ends on Old Christmas Day, January sixth, but no one I know is strict about it. Our hosts last night had been unable to fit in a date during the regular Christmas season, so they held a party replete with cake and tree on January ninth. Here it was around midnight and I got some good near scowls from those near some of the food. A good time was had by all. This is a mash of two pictures with lots of burning and cloning, if not to hide the join, then to mask it.