The facebook strikes again. Someone I sat next to at Santa Teresa HS in San Jose messaged me after all these XX years. I used to drive him home and tak about whatever it is that Californian high schoolers talk about. It swiftly brought back memories of the photography class we were in and my favorite teacher, Mr. Strauss, or Mighty Strauss as he called himself. I was pretty good in the class (somehow with a 110% grade) so he let me use his Hasselblat in the second year. I once had a photo that I thought had beautiful clouds and a landscape, and I didn’t understand why he kept laughing. He finally told me to look more closely and see that the cloud is actually my hair falling over the top of the frame (though the 2×2 film in the hasselblat is expoosed normally, the viewfinder is film sized and located at the top and you have to lean over and look inside to compose the shot). I still thought it looked good and asked him. He said he had to back up a bit to evaluate it … a little more … a little more … he actually went outside and ran to the other side of campus and yelled “Oh, Okay, it looks good from here!” Another time I asked him to correct a photo so he took out some magic markers and started coloring all elements of the pic a-la-coloring book. I was shocked and he said only that next time I might say what I mean and ask him to grade the photo rather than correct it. So long as I’m on a nostalgia trip, have a gander at that golden age above, my HS graduation.