I spent 15 years teaching at North Hollywood High School, and 12 of those in room A162 in the Agriculture Area, so it makes sense that I have a bunch of pix. I used to make displays in front of the main office about the Ag Area, the Naturalist Academy, and other stuff. Lots of harvesting, various events (food, firings, etc.), and many guest speakers are herein depicted. More than one Rustic Canyon hike happened with many repeat customers. This batch also has colleague Billy Sheets’s band, Mary Lynn’s choir, and the homeless shelter we would donate to…

Random family pix (all five at 1375), camping, and ML’s delicious cooking up of our Ag Area produce…

Thanks to Zoo Magnet science teacher Barry Shapiro, in early 2000 I had the opportunity to go on an Earthwatch expedition to Brazil. The Fazenda Rio Negro, formerly a cattle ranch, had been turned into an ecotourism destination to research and learn about the ecology of the Pantanal.

Not all the water that drains off the eastern slopes of the Andes mountains goes into the Amazon River basin. Some of it drains into the south central of South America – the Pantanal (related: the novel, the TV series).

With a group of fellow teachers from around the USA, we assisted in the research interests of a couple of professors, Donald Eaton & Alexine Keuroghlian – he: fresh water invertebrates & fish, she: peccaries! (both from the University of Nevada at Reno).

In addition to amazing sunsets and deep jungles, you just saw swimming in pirhana infested waters, building an observation staton, bushwhackin’ with the Pantañeros, and researching critters. Some included here: many type of fish and aquatic creepycrawlies, jacari, tapir, tooyouyou, capyberrae, emus, and a toad. (Lurking nearby: jaguar, ocelot, anaconda, and the elusive peccary…

If you don’t already know, ask Mary Lynn why we went to China – and why we have not returned. In any case, we did in November 2001, right after the events of 9/11. We went for three weeks with a tour company, China Focus, and saw quite a bit of the country (at least in terms of tourist destinations).

Generally speaking: Beijing & the Forbidden City, a fraction of the Great Wall, the Farewell to the Three Gorges cruise up the Yangtze (now flooded by the world’s biggest dam), the terracotta warriors of Xian, silk, pearls, pagodas, calligraphy, pearls, the Li River Valley, Guangzhou, Wuhan, Shanghai, buddhas & babies…

For this last batch: some random foolery, a mélange of miscellany: Nancy & Jered’s wedding extravaganza, a trip to Canada with my pregnant wife (to test out our new VW Eurovan, Dad’s second heart surgery (25 years after the first), some school stuff (including a visit to hear and meet Supreme Court justice Anthony Kennedy, and Marya’s baby shower at the Villa Maria for Mary Lynn, and some other items…

So, Mom, dear family, loyal friends, and curious strangers (!?), this concludes the first half of my life, I hope (presuming I can make it at least into the mid-80’s). The last episode of Archival Pix (Part 5) will feature the kids and a change in technology.

Around the time they were in elementary school, smartphones changed my relationship with cameras and photography). I’d also point out for archivists that there was a phase where I shot more video than stills. I have collections of various generations of videotape attesting to this (many were eventually burned on to DVDs [if you can find that collection]). {Still looking for video cameras to play stuff back on…!}

Charlie & Veronica (and perhaps our dog Sugar Pie) will feature prominently in Part 5, but once that batch is over I stopped making collections of pix in photo albums (which is good ’cause schleppin’ & storin’ those crates is, nyuk. {There’s a curious gap between the time RandomVail.com begins in 2015 and 6-7 years earlier…?}