A handful of negative Nancies would have you believe that it takes me years to get my photos developed. Not so!

It just takes years to get them on the Web.

A hearty congratulations to Laurie and Jeremy.

A few recent thoughts about film.

• I bought a folding press camera last week. Excited about the potential of shooting a lot of sheet film, I was going to buy a Kodak Readyload holder to go with it, only to discover that Kodak discontinued the entire Readyload system just a couple of days earlier.
• I wouldn’t have been able to use the Readyloads anyway. I had meant to buy a 4×5” camera—only I accidentally bought a beautiful example of the long-obsolete 3.25×4.25” format. The only reason anyone ever shot 3.25” film was because you could contact-print a negative right into a two-column newspaper layout without any last-minute darkroom hassle.
• I went to two stores this week looking for Fuji Pro 800Z film for Laurie’s wedding. Both were sold out. Calumet begrudgingly sold me their last roll of the Kodak version (Portra 800). I had to get special permission from the manager to buy it because the sales clerk was concerned they were saving it for a more important customer. (Thanks, Calumet!) Several other types of film were “reserved.” Lately, buying photo film has been a bit like waiting in a bread line. What next—two per customer? Stores are frequently out of what I’m looking for. It seems to me that demand outstrips supply.

From my quotations file, a gem from two years ago:

Mr. Newman makes his own salad dressing at home, too, though he occasionally reaches for the stuff that started the Newman’s Own empire. To date, the food company has generated $220 million in charitable donations and has expanded to include popcorn and a line of fruit drinks and salsas, which he sometimes buys in jars at the grocery store. While the stunned checker grapples with the fact that Paul Newman is buying Newman’s Own salsa, he gets a kick out of saying, “It must be really good if I’m paying retail for it.”

I noticed that the type of rocket ferrying the taikonauts on China’s first spacewalk mission is known as Long March II-F.

Does it seem appropriate to name a rocket after a massive and bloody military retreat?

“Come closer, people! We’re not armed, even though we are black.”