Letters Home a visual diary of Matthew Ginn's activities in Portland, Oregon, and beyond971-219-7189
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Health research
Perrie had to stay late to conduct an experiment one evening a couple weeks ago. As it happened, I was in the neighborhood (with my camera, of course) so I stopped by to see her new office and lab. She was taking hourly samples from bits of tissue exposed to some treatment or other, freezing [...]
Cats
How cliche is it to post pictures of your cats on the internet? Plenty. But I’m going to subject you to it anyway. For those who haven’t met them already, these are George and Gracie. We got them from the Geauga Humane Society Rescue Village. They are a brother-sister pair of tuxedo cats who had [...]
Guest book
Without doubt, the best thing about a funeral is that it brings family together from far and wide. When I was in Toronto a couple weeks ago for my grandfather’s funeral, I stayed at my Aunt’s house along with my brother and his family. Before they left, my nephews signed her guest book.
Sidney, Nebraska
Probably the coolest thing about moving from Portland to Cleveland was the opportunity to drive across the continent. I’ll write another post with details about the trip, but suffice to say that mostly due to the major weather system chasing us across the midwest, we didn’t have much time to linger or stray from our [...]
Kenneth Baldwin Davey, Grandpa, 1924-2013
Born July 18, 1924 in Sevenoaks, England: a Kentish Man. Served in the Corps of Royal Engineers in World War II, followed by a career as a quantity surveyor. Married Magda Lowy (1926-2010) in 1947. Moved to Kingston, Ontario, in 1957 and Toronto in 1965. Died March 6, 2013, in Toronto. Leaves behind three children, [...]
Getting to know Cleveland
As you may know, Perrie and I will be moving to Cleveland in a few weeks. I’m really excited to explore the city, meet people, and get to know my way around. When we were there last weekend, I had a couple hours to walk around downtown and of course I brought my camera. I [...]
Oaks Bottom Wildlife Refuge
The miracle of a four-day weekend (even if you work most of the day on Friday) is that you have time to do everything you normally do on the weekend, get caught up on some backlog of things you’ve been meaning to do, and still have time to go for a walk. So Sunday Perrie [...]
Recent hikes
I’ve been a bad blogger lately … I’ve been busy, though, with travels and shooting a bunch of exciting things that I can’t share with you yet. But here are some photos I can share, from a pair of hikes Perrie and I took recently. The first, a month ago today, was at the Wapato [...]
Cape Cod
For the final day of our honeymoon, Perrie and I tackled Cape Cod. Leaving early from our place in Plymouth, we stopped for breakfast in Hyannis, where every business is connected with the Kennedy’s. “The Kennedy’s used to eat here.” “Jack Kennedy always got his hair cut here.” “Mrs. Kennedy bought a postcard here.” We [...]
On the Freedom Trail (part 2)
To continue where we left off, after touring the Old North Church, Perrie and I walked across the Charlestown Bridge to Charlestown, and then over to the Charlestown Navy Yard, home of the USS Constitution. The USS Constitution (not to be confused with the U.S. Constitution) is billed as “the world’s oldest commissioned warship afloat.” Yes, [...]
On the Freedom Trail (part 1)
On Day 4 of our honeymoon (Thursday), Perrie and I crammed two days worth of sightseeing into about 8 hours of touring in Boston. But I won’t shortchange you with just a single blog post—I’ll spread it out over two because the city is just so photogenic. To get to Boston, we took the commuter [...]
Salem, Mass.
On our second full day in Massachusetts, Perrie and I set off for Salem, home to Nathaniel Hawthorne and some witches. Or not witches. This was the only really rainy day of our trip, and even then the skies held up most of the day. We poked around various shops and historical sites on the [...]
A day in Plymouth
After getting married Sept. 15 in Kingston, Perrie and I spent most of the next day driving to Plymouth, Mass., where we had a house rented for the week. For Monday, our objective was to take a relatively easy day checking out the town. First, though, a brief history lesson: Plymouth is, not coincidentally, located [...]
Floral arrangements
A lot of people contributed their talents and connections to help Perrie and me put our wedding together, but perhaps foremost among those was Perrie’s sister Valerie, who offered to provide and arrange the flowers. Friday afternoon, while we were off delivering the wedding cake to the venue, Valerie and a team of helpers descended [...]
The calm before the storm
So, as many of you know, Perrie and I got married a couple weeks ago. Since most of our family lives in or near Kingston, Ontario, that’s where we had the ceremony. However, since we live in Portland, Ore., we had to do most (well, basically all) of the planning long-distance. We gave ourselves one [...]
Thomas DaCat, c.2005-2012
There’s an old joke I’ve seen circulating on the internet, comparing the diaries of a cat and a dog. Every hour, the dog notes some mundane event as “the best thing ever!” The cat’s diary begins with the dateline “Day 1,538 of my captivity.” For Thomas, that captivity became more and more real over the [...]
The long drive home
Just one more post from the trip that Perrie and I made to Alberta at the beginning of the month. Since we’d planned to split the drive home over two days, we decided to take a different route. From Okotoks to Frank, Alta., we followed our original route (through Elko, B.C., which is only notable [...]
Frank Slide
One of the unexpected highlights of our recent trip to Alberta was a visit to the Frank Slide. It wasn’t something we deliberately planned to include in our route, but since our route passed right through it (literally) we decided to make a stop. We didn’t have time on the way up, so we point [...]
Into Calgary
Though it wasn’t intentional, our recent visit to Alberta (see post 1) coincided with the Calgary Stampede. And not just any stampede: this year was the centennial stampede, so everybody was going over and above the usual fanfare to put on an extra-special show. I read somewhere that the first stampede parade, in 1912, drew [...]
An unexpected visitor
It is often said that the best camera to use is the one you have with you. The morning of July 7, that happened to be my cell phone. I haven’t used its camera very much—and it is clearly limited, compared with my Nikon DSLRs—but when it’s what you have with you, it is the [...]
More horsey business
As mentioned previously, Perrie’s dad and stepmother keep two horses on their property. I don’t remember what Rojo’s story is, but Shirle used to ride Gracie for dressage, and later jumping, if I remember correctly. Anyway, most of the property is devoted to the horses and related things, like barns, hay storage and manure piles. [...]
Sanctuary at the Leighton Art Centre
On our visit to Alberta earlier this month, between trips to Spruce Meadows, Okotoks, and the local tack and feed shop we found time to visit the Leighton Art Centre which sits in the picturesque countryside somewhere between Okotoks, Millarville, Black Diamond and Calgary. The skies ranged from clear to large cumulonimbus clouds and there [...]
A horsey weekend
Perrie and I recently took an extended weekend off to visit her dad and step-mom at their new home near Calgary. We made the 14-hour drive (not including a couple of geocaching stops) in one day, arriving at “Graceview” around 11 p.m. local time. We weren’t quite sure what we’d be up to during our [...]