Henri Cartier-Bresson, Montreal (1965)

We've been at a cabin my mother-in-law rented on Lake Michigan all week. I've really been enjoying everyone's stories about the people and places that led them to the music they love. I am reminded of the mixtape my first girlfriend made for me, the tapes I went out and bought after hearing them played for the first time at camp, and the hours I spent in the record stores of my hometown trying to gauge what the employees thought was cool (except for that reggae guy).

There's a few more hours to enter the contest for the free Slotradio, I'll announce the random winner with an update to this post in the afternoon.

* * * * *Winner: Scott, 08.12.09 - 7:17 am ("But, now and then, if you take a more adventurous slant and flip the dial, click on an unfamiliar music blog link, or even just ask a friend what they're listening to these days, you can find a gem or two amongst an unfamiliar landscape of jazz, country, or even opera.") Congratulations Scott!

Man, these two stewbums really need their mid-morning cigarette. Either that, or this photo was taken just before they had the four drams of rotgut they need to get through a day of replacing bobbins down at the mill. Don't worry lads, you'll be as stiff as a ring-bolt 'ere midday.

There's still a little time to enter the contest of for the new Sandisk slotRadio. Leave a comment here before noon EST today and I'll update this post to announce the winner after noon.

*UPDATE*

Random date/time generator result: 09-Jul-2009 13:20:51

Winner: Susan, 07.09.09 - 1:22 pm.

Congratulations, Susan, and thanks to everyone who left comments. You all were too nice. We'll be giving the last one away next month.

A few moments ago I held my baby in the rocker and listened to his murmuring around the mouth of the bottle. Every afternoon for over a year now I have done this until he falls asleep, at which point I set him down in the crib and creep out of the room. Today he just pointed towards his crib and said, "In." I put him down giggling and chattering, sure that he wouldn't be falling asleep any time soon. Still, I sat in the rocker next to his crib, reading a book, hopeful that my presence was at least comforting to him. A few seconds later he looked up at me and said, "Bye bye" while waving his arm.

And now that little boy is asleep.

I found about a hundred new urchin photos last night and some of them are really cool. Almost as cool as these girls with their folded arms checking out the dudes outside the factory walls.

You still have time to enter the contest for the free music player, just leave a comment on the most recent post before 3:00 p.m. EST and I'll update this post as soon as I use the random number generator to determine a winner.

**UPDATE**

Thanks to everyone for the hilarious comments. We only have one 1000-song player to give away for Father's Day, but they're sending us a couple more so we'll have another contest in a few weeks and give those away as well (hopefully with friendlier odds). Using the random time and date generator at random.org we determined the winner of this giveaway to be the person who commented closest to 1:24 a.m. on June 11, 2009: Jennifer, from Bend, Oregon. I think Jennifer was one of the first people to read this blog in 2005. Glad you've stuck around all these years, Jennifer.

This morning I looked at this photo and said to my wife, "Let's not be those hipster parents who let their son's hair grow all long and shaggy so that old ladies confuse him for a little girl. . .let's shave him!"

She said, "No."

Also, new urchin-related Woodcraft up yesterday.

The dream the kid told my wife about this morning:

"I was about six and in the abandoned zoo with Pops. There were lots of rusty nails and broken glass but we had steel-toed boots on so it was okay. We saw a tiger and he tumbled down. And Pops said, 'hello' very quietly and I said 'hello' very quietly. It was a nice tiger. Then suddenly we heard an 'aye-yi-aa' above us---it was a monkey! Then suddenly I heard a flap of wings above me. It was the body of a lion and the wings of an eagle---a griffin! I wore pink steel-toed boots. Pops wore the black ones and he stepped on a rusty nail!"

New WoodCraft post up, over there in left column.

A let out a audible gasp when I found this one. "Albert Schafer, eight year old newsboy who usually begins at 8:00 A.M. Sundays. Sells some on week-days. Is a cripple. Makes one to two dollars a day. Location: Austin, Texas." Lewis Hine, October 1913.

[click on the image to get a better view]

"The Christmas Spirit reaches some Transient Flats children after Christmas via the city dump."

From the California State Archives collection of Great Depression photographs at LearnCalifornia.org, via Cara Phillips at Ground Glass.

It's been too long since we've had some urchins from good old Mr. Lewis Hine.

This photo comes from my favorite vintage children's book find of all time: Tobe, published in 1939 with photographs by Charles Anderson Farrell and text by Stella Gentry Sharpe. Through vignettes and photographs it tells the story of a black farming family in Goshen (just south of Greensboro) North Carolina during the depression. It's sort of an unknown children's book version of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (one of my favorite books). I am sure one of these days I will share more of Tobe in a separate post. But for now, (and in honor of the amazing Halloween in the Time of Cholera set that has spread so rapidly around the web): this creepy urchin Halloween photo.

[We just got back from a morning photo shoot on Belle Isle, so I'll have pictures of the kids in their costumes posted shortly]

"Street scene in Poplar," (East End, London) by the great Cyril Arapoff.

Paging Lewis Hine: found this in the September JCrew Catalog. Because there's nothing like a $385 Cashmere sweater woven in a three gauge knit by an eleven-year-old Pakistani kid to make your precocious youngster look just like his nine-year-old great-great-grandpa did after a long day working at the mill in 1902.

One of the perks of working at the cigar factory: when you turn ten, you get to smoke as many cigars as you want.