Images through Windows: a pean to my Photos

If I were richer I might have become an Apple person.  Today, I’m glad I didn’t have the wherewithal.

I have always liked Windows 7.  I only wanted to upgrade to the free Windows 10 because:  (1)  I enjoy figuring out new computer stuff, and (b) I worried that Windows 7 might lose its support someday.

Windows 10 is a dandy program.  Thank you, Microsoft, for this present.  All the efficiencies aside, the thing I really love about 10 is that it will, hand in hand with Google, take every picture stored in the computer, and bring them to my eyes in random order as a screen saver.  When I was letting Windows 10  know my preferences, Google offered me Google Photos and I accepted.  Thank you, Google, for the present of Picassa and the later present of Photos.   I may stop computing altogether and just watch the screen saver.

In the last few days I have enjoyed, beautiful, clear, and also fuzzy pictures of many people I love.  I watch them age and grow young and age again.  I’ve seen most of the beautiful places I’ve visited over the years.

Betsy pops up as a five-year-old saluting her cousin Nina from the porch of the Redlands house.  Sister Nancy smiles at us during her wonderful 70^th birthday party, she mugs as she and John wear each others hats.  Handsome nephew Tommy, who died at forty, shows as a proud, ten-year-old swimming champion, and as a mature, capable, young man, showing us around his Kansas City neighborhood.  Jack and Rauna marry in Helsinki.  Seija, Nina and Christy, their daughters, look magical dressed as princesses in crowns and gowns; Seija wields a wand.  Jackson’s nostril takes up much of the screen in a selfie he took when he was three, before anyone else made selfies. Polly's daughter Julie stands with her dear daughters, Ruthie and Paige at Polly's house in Keswick.  Nancy’s son Johnny horses around with his younger cousins at the Inn in Mattapoisett.  Nancy’s firstborn, Annie, and Andy cut their wedding cake at their saltbox in Mattapoisett; five-year-old Cat watches the cake with rapt attention.  Ox climbs Bear Den Mountain, drives across the Rocky Mountains, skillfully flies a kite, walks up the beach at Assateague, holds the infant Betsy.  Cat plays billiards (pool?) with cousin John in Naulakha (Rudyard Kipling’s house in Vermont - rented out by the National Trust).  Nancy’s Annie, and Annie's beautiful daughter Jess, look at ancient tombstones in Scotland.  Polly’s Sarah whispers to her niece, Pagie with a fine Christmas tree in the background and a fine view of Lake Monticello in the farther back background.  Adult Sarah looks glamorous against the hanging lights at Bodos.  Betsy holds her belly a few hours before Jackson is born. Betsy, Ox, Tom and I, in sequence hold the hour-old infant Jackson in the hospital room.  Cat helps Jackson stop the waves on the beach at Assateague.  Young Rauna, Jack’s wife, glamorous in a bathing suit, stands behind one of their baby girls, who, naked, crouches in the pond licking the water.  John and Wendy look over the water on the ferry from Arran to Kintyre.   Ox and Cat walk part way up the trail to John’s Meadow in the San Bernardino Mountains; John's Meadow was named after my father.  Virginia Betton Burton, at the age of 100, meets her baby grandson Jackson.  Ox, Mike and Jack sit on Jack's deck in Maryland smoking cigars.  Sammy and Cricket, Cat's dogs, lie in the sand; Cricket barks at the waves.  What a wonderful crew!

I see mountains, deserts, cathedrals, oceans, fishing villages, marshes and sunsets with such pleasure.  I forgot the beautiful sandstone and sunsets of New Mexico, the San Bernardino mountains, Yorkshire Cathedral, New Mexico, Saddell castle on the east coast of Kintyre, where Nancy threw her 70^th birthday party, Polly’s houses in Michigan, New York and Virginia, family parties in Bethesda thrown by Jack and Rauna, the towns of Lynchburg, Virginia, and Redlands, California.  There are many pictures of the sunset I watched for an hour on Assateague. There are many pictures of Mint Springs Park in all its guises and many of the nature trail at Old Trail before they built houses around its mouth.

Pictures I have taken of pictures I have painted show up between all the beautiful people and places.

I have said for years that I didn’t need photographs to remember the people and places I love.  I was wrong.  Watching this screensaver reminds me of my world and my love of it.